Cool things discovered in Windows 7 (6801)

[Denis W. Veteran]

i agree but i think they are afraid of noobs switching desktops and wondering where everything went! they should bury the feature deep in the guts some where so its hard to activate.

Exactly.

[Menge]

i'm sorry brandon, but i must disagree with you on the virtual desktops thing.

the taskbar thumbnails are welcome, but virtual desktops are completely awesome! every single OS X user i know uses Spaces and i highly doubt that Windows users wouldn't benefit from such feature. i have been waiting for a Microsoft solution for this for AGES and will be very sad if Microsoft ignores this kind of thing :\

i miss Expos? and Spaces when i'm on my Windows desktop.

[bornslippy]

I've used Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE and Mac OSX alot.

Never have i found Multiple desktop useful for workflow or other practical things other than "bling"...

[sjaak327]

I love spaces in OSX, especialy when using Vmware, one space for OSX, another one for a fulll screen OS running inside Vmware. Of course when you happen to have a dual monitor setup, you would use that instead.

But in general, it would be great if they would equip windows with functionality like that, and I wonder how hard it would be.

[Calum Veteran]

I think a 'Spaces'-like feature in Windows 7 would be used and appreciated by many. I am a developer as well as a uni student. It would be extremely useful to have my development programs on one desktop, my university notes on another desktop and my web browser, email program, media player, etc on a third desktop. This wouldn't just help with organisation but it would allow me to access my programs easier and get rid of clutter on the main desktop I have.

I don't see why Microsoft haven't implemented it into Windows? If they are affraid of people not realising that their things have gone onto a new desktop, they can promote the feature better or even implement it into the Control Panel with the default option as "Disabled" and clear help on how to use it.

I would like an actual proper explanation as to why it isn't being considered for Windows, if you could please Brandon? It seems many people would actually like that feature and even though the majority of Windows' market share are non 'techies', I 'm sure they would use this feature when they know what it is. They just need a little bit of education :)

[Mikee99]

Brandon, I have a question about the previews on the taskbar. It seems that in all the videos for Windows 7, the mouse pointer needs to hover over the icon for about a second and a half before the previews appear. Is there anyway to make that appear faster? I just find that 1 second or so for the previews to appear is a little long.

Personally, I wouldn't have a delay when you hover, since it makes it app switching faster.

[KevinN206]

Brandon, I have a question about the previews on the taskbar. It seems that in all the videos for Windows 7, the mouse pointer needs to hover over the icon for about a second and a half before the previews appear. Is there anyway to make that appear faster? I just find that 1 second or so for the previews to appear is a little long.

Personally, I wouldn't have a delay when you hover, since it makes it app switching faster.

That's the first thing I noticed while using it. The "short" delay is annoying at best, and you have to "wait" for the preview to appear before switching.

[denilson3]

there are some 3rd party desktop switchers

http://www.codeplex.com/vdm

but i think its a bit buggy. maybe its just a bit psychological on my part (windowblinds and other programs that affect the guts of desktop just make windows feel a bit fragile to me).

would love to have microsoft test and implement it themselves.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Brandon, I have a question about the previews on the taskbar. It seems that in all the videos for Windows 7, the mouse pointer needs to hover over the icon for about a second and a half before the previews appear. Is there anyway to make that appear faster? I just find that 1 second or so for the previews to appear is a little long.

Personally, I wouldn't have a delay when you hover, since it makes it app switching faster.

1.5 seconds? It's barely .5 seconds on my laptop and it's still in beta? If there was a counter it would probably be 300ms which yes is more than it should be but i haven't seen 1.5 seconds anywhere yet.

[Mikee99]

1.5 seconds? It's barely .5 seconds on my laptop and it's still in beta? If there was a counter it would probably be 300ms which yes is more than it should be but i haven't seen 1.5 seconds anywhere yet.

Well that's good. It just appear to be at least a sec from watching the video. I do hope they remove the delay. Otherwise, switching apps would take longer to do than on the current system, and that would be a step backwards.

[Stetson]

Well that's good. It just appear to be at least a sec from watching the video. I do hope they remove the delay. Otherwise, switching apps would take longer to do than on the current system, and that would be a step backwards.

You can also just click the icon for instant results :)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Thought I'd give this thread a bump, since I don't think this is enough to justify a new thread:

Looks like Aero Peek was kept under wraps through the latter part of Vista's development. Its patent application dates from January 2005:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061229/...owsing-flip-3d/

[Joel]

I beg to differ, there are many uses for virtual desktops, especially when users have a large workflow (and subsequently, a lot of windows opened) on computers with only one monitor; virtual desktops would allow you to move different workflows to different desktops for easier access (for example, you could have your web browser and e-mail programs open in one desktop, a development environment (Visual Studio for example) in another desktop, and Dreamweaver or Photoshop in a 3rd desktop), it would make things a lot cleaner in the long run.

The MAJORITY of users will never even know it exists, so while there may be many uses for it, there won't be many users.

[profets]

Thought I'd give this thread a bump, since I don't think this is enough to justify a new thread:

Looks like Aero Peek was kept under wraps through the latter part of Vista's development. Its patent application dates from January 2005:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061229/...owsing-flip-3d/

thats pretty cool.. even the article in the link is nearly 2 years old. funny how they referred to it as 'x-ray browsing' and not much more came of it until now with win7

[Denis W. Veteran]

Came across this for System Restore:

[George P Global Moderator]

^^^ Nice find, looks like they're working on giving you more information with system restore and so on. Looking good.

[cwpenner]

I've used that system restore from the cd the other day. I like the update. However, I don't like why system restore isn't fixing my problem haha.

iTunes prompted me to update last week, so naturally, "sure" I said. Upon restart, the computer booted up to a black screen. So I powered off and booted in safe mode, ran msconfig and booted so I could at least uninstall iTunes. Well, that didn't fix the problem, so I system restored from the cd, and that still didn't fix my problem. Now the computer either boots to A) a black screen, B) a slightly lighter screen with the watermark and a pointer but nothing else, or C) it gets to the login screen and the screen just flickers between black and the login screen. Nothing can be done in any scenario (ie mouse can't click anything, and ctrl-alt-del (or I guess ctrl-shift-esc) has no effect).

Any ideas apart from reinstalling the OS? I know it's not even beta stages yet, and for the most part I know my way around a computer, but this is starting to really annoy me since I can't find a way to fix it, so I wouldn't mind if someone had any helpful input in the matter.

Thanks!

P.S. sorry for jacking this thread.

[Settepotet]

Have you tried booting in safe mode?

[cwpenner]

Yea, I booted into safe mode to run msconfig so I could restart with just system services in order to uninstall iTunes. It works if I boot with no startup services, so I'm sure I could narrow it down sooner or later, but the only thing I did was install an iTunes update, and I then uninstalled everything iTunes related.

This issue started after updating iTunes, and I uninstalled iTunes, so I'm just at a loss as to what is causing the problem since I had no issues whatsoever before the update.

I was just wondering if anyone else had conflicts with iTunes as serious as this.

[Denis W. Veteran]

In the new On-Screen Keyboard, turn on predictive text.

They anticipate developers will be using Windows 7 pre-beta builds to sing praises about MS executives on forums to the point where they damage their keyboards, so they've included their last names as predicted words. (i.e. type 'sinof', 'ballm')

Another weird predicted word is 'macintouch'.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

In the new On-Screen Keyboard, turn on predictive text.

They anticipate developers will be using Windows 7 pre-beta builds to sing praises about MS executives on forums to the point where they damage their keyboards, so they've included their last names as predicted words. (i.e. type 'sinof', 'ballm')

Another weird predicted word is 'macintouch'.

Are you sure it isn't adding words from documents on your machine, web sites you visit, or something like that?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Are you sure it isn't adding words from documents on your machine, web sites you visit, or something like that?

Nope, a word like "macintouch" came up while I was trying to spell "macintosh". Until yesterday I've never heard of the site (macintouch.com)

[Antraxek]

And what do you think about shake option? For it isn't useful becouse mostyl I use full screen view.