Working with Windows 7 (currently in beta) I soon discovered a whole bunch of cool new features that might come in handy for a lot of users. Many things in Windows 7 seem to be pretty much in line with what Vista already has in, but there are also a lot of new and exciting features and changes. The taskbar is one of them.
Note: Remember, Windows 7 is still under development. The version I'm working with to grab screenshots from is beta build 7000, and things might (and probably will) change by RTM comes along.
First of all, the taskbar looks new and re-designed. It's twice as high as the one in Windows Vista. You can make the icons smaller, but frankly, that doesn't look better…
Second, the Quick Launch toolbar is gone. No more present. Done with, caput! Instead, in this beta build, you get 3 default shortcuts: Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player. While one might miss the good old Quick Launch toolbar, new functionality of the taskbar will quickly make your pains go away. The Taskbar now acts as a place to both launch common applications as well as access running tasks, and there's no difference anymore between the 2 functions. This is one change that I like!
The new Windows 7 taskbar not only lets you customize the default "pinned" application shortcuts, but it also acts as the regular Quick Launch toolbar, allowing you to drag and drop any application or shortcut to it.
Dragging a file or shortcut now opens a little tool-tip item and "moves" the other icons away so you can easily position the shortcut wherever you want.
Dragging and dropping also works from the Start menu itself.
You can also customize the taskbar's pinned applications by right-clicking on them and selecting whether to pin them or not to pin them.
Here too, like in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, pressing the Windows Logo key + a number (1,2 or 3 and so on) will automatically launch the application found on that position. For example, pressing Win Logo + 1 will launch Internet Explorer, because that's the application found in the first left most place.
Because the Taskbar now acts as both a place to launch common applications and a place to access running tasks, the icons on the Taskbar also serve as the task icon. Once you launch an application, that same icon transforms into the task icon that you use to switch back and forth between applications, and also use a stack concept to show you how many open windows.
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