Favourite feature of Windows 7 so far...
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i like that the 'show desktop' button has been reduced to a tiny rectangle in the lower-right side of the taskbar. no really, i do. you can just throw your mouse down and to the right, then click. it's almost a gesture, now.
Wow, I had no idea that was even there! I feel so.. stupid.
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Shog9 wrote:
it actually feels frustratingly tedious to maximize and restore windows on XP now.
What, double-clicking the title-bar is harder than grabbing it and dragging it? Methinks not.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Yes, it is. When you double-click the title-bar to restore a window, it then suddenly appears in another place, so you have to search for it in the screen before you can use it again. It's a matter of milliseconds, but it's still tedious. Dragging it away from the maximized state is so much smoother: you just feel everything under your control. I know it's a little thing, but I think it contributes to improve the general user experience.
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Great thread Chris, I took note of all of them and sent them to my home email address! Work PC is sadly still XP... *sigh* :thumbsup:
Mike Devenney
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The ability to speed up your boot time by setting win7 to use more than 1 core to start up (look in msconfig)
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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When I'm at two screens it used to bother me that I could only dock at the leftmost half of the left screen, and rightmost half of the right screen. WIN+ARROWLEFT and WIN+ARROWRIGHT will allow you to use "all four positions". Thank you, Microsoft. WIN+ARROWUP will maximize , while WIN+ARROWDOWN will restore if maximized and minimize to taskbar if windowed. Nice as well. Also, consider WIN+P where you can now easily switch between you monitor and the attached projector. No more fiddling around with Intel/IBM/HP specific software. /Jan
Do you know why it's important to make fast decisions? Because you give yourself more time to correct your mistakes, when you find out that you made the wrong one. Chris Meech on deciding whether to go to his daughters graduation or a Neil Young concert
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Snap is great but... I had to turn it off because it is an on or off feature. I use remote desktops to multiple physical and virtual machines for maintenamce tasks. With snap turned on, I cannot move them around without having to resize them manually since moving them from the corner of the primary screen restores them. I wish I could use the other features of snap but most of my work is done in remote desktops.
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
My favorite feature is one that carried over from Vista: The Quick Search/Launch Box. I used to just have hotkeys for a bunch of random things but decided that typing out their executable names was more memorable. Windows key followed by "calc" is something I sometimes need but not frequently enough to warrant a hotkey for. Someday I'd like to learn the Control Panel executable names so I don't have to dig around there. Specific to 7, I'm glad the Windows + # keys work on the taskbar just like they did to the Quick Launch bar in Vista.
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My favorite feature is one that carried over from Vista: The Quick Search/Launch Box. I used to just have hotkeys for a bunch of random things but decided that typing out their executable names was more memorable. Windows key followed by "calc" is something I sometimes need but not frequently enough to warrant a hotkey for. Someday I'd like to learn the Control Panel executable names so I don't have to dig around there. Specific to 7, I'm glad the Windows + # keys work on the taskbar just like they did to the Quick Launch bar in Vista.
The search is smart enough that I've yet to not find what I wanted in control panel by searching even when I don't know what exactly it's called. I'm going to take a WAG and say they mined the CEIP program data very heavily there to make sure everything returned properly.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
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Dragging windows to the side in order to have them dock left/right and take up exactly half the screen. I'm on 2 screens at the office which is great, then at home I'm on one big screen that can now act as two split screens easily. Runner up: that totally cool, totally ridiculous thing where you grab a window with the mouse, shake it, and all the other windows minimise.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I like that I can pin the control panel to the taskbar, then pin Network Connections to control panel. This lets me right-click on the taskbar control panel shortcut and get to Network Connections without going through a ton of menus. In fact, when you open control panel, you can then drag any of the links onto the control panel taskbar item and pin a shortcut to...well...anything in control panel. I also really like how when you're using something like Word (i'm on 2010) that the recent documents are part of the program, not OS-wide. The expander-arrow next to the program in the start menu is really good. I am ALWAYS working on more than 10 things, but rarely do I work on more than 10 things in one application. Cheers, -jc
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Hmm. I should remember to use that feature. Also neat is being able to "peek" at the desktop by moving your mouse to the bottom right hand corner and having Windows make all the windows transparent temporarily. I have the weather gadget running on the sidebar, so this lets me take a look at the current temperature without having to minimize anything. I suspect this feature is also a source of confusion for folks who don't know about it and happen to move the pointer to the bottom right-hand corner!
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
You can also use Win+Space for that.
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You can also use Win+Space for that.
Ah! Thanks for that! Another reason to not touch the mouse.
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
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"...There's not even any decent snow to cover the grey and make things brighter..." That's because most of the snow fell south of your southern border. I'm fairly certain the good folks around Washington DC would be happy to send some white stuff your way. Truck loads, even. It even snowed, albeit briefly, in Florida. :cool:
Yet another sign of global warming.
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Yet another sign of global warming.
Rick Shaub wrote:
Yet another sign of global warming.
Um........... no. If snow, ice and sub-zero wind chills were signs of warming, then logically I should be able to chill a macaroni salad in the oven. :)
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Rick Shaub wrote:
Yet another sign of global warming.
Um........... no. If snow, ice and sub-zero wind chills were signs of warming, then logically I should be able to chill a macaroni salad in the oven. :)
Did I forget the sarcasm mark again? Sorry.
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Did I forget the sarcasm mark again? Sorry.
Ah, more victims of illiterate literalization :(( ! One of the signs of global warming is escalation of climate instability, like 49 of the 50 US States suddenly having snow at one time, after several years of winters, across "the South" in particular, when there was no freeze. Just wait--more signs of global warming will be armadillo roadkill in Chicago, and Scotland turning into the Yukon...
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Rick Shaub wrote:
Yet another sign of global warming.
Um........... no. If snow, ice and sub-zero wind chills were signs of warming, then logically I should be able to chill a macaroni salad in the oven. :)
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Ah, more victims of illiterate literalization :(( ! One of the signs of global warming is escalation of climate instability, like 49 of the 50 US States suddenly having snow at one time, after several years of winters, across "the South" in particular, when there was no freeze. Just wait--more signs of global warming will be armadillo roadkill in Chicago, and Scotland turning into the Yukon...