10 Jul 2011

New Taskbar Features in Windows 7

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…

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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.

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Dragging and dropping also works from the Start menu itself.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Drag and Drop to Command Prompt – It’s Back in Windows 7!

Working with the Command Prompt is one of an IT Professional's required skills. In previous Windows operating systems, one could drag and object to an open Command Prompt window in order to ease our work. This feature was nice to have especially when running executable files nested deep within a folder hierarchy. Instead of manually navigating the Command Prompt path to the required folder, you could simply drag and drop the necessary file to the Run option or to the Command Prompt and press Enter to run it.

Somehow, this useful feature wend away in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. I wrote about this in my Missing Drag and Drop in Vista Command Prompt article. In Vista/2008, if you try to drag a file from anywhere in Windows Explorer to an open Command Prompt window you see that the pointer icon changes to a "no entry" symbol:

When asked, Microsoft officials provided dull answers and claimed that this is "by design" and that it was in fact "a feature". Some claimed that "This was done to reduce the command window's dealings with the dragged data object". This last excuse is, in my opinion, pure crap especially when compared to the huge overhead provided by other so-called "advanced" features of Vista such as the process-intensive Aero theme (read my Aero Theme is bad, disable it article or to the huge overhead of the TCP Window Auto tuning functionality that wrecks havoc to your network copy and browse functions (read my Browsing websites and downloading files is painfully slow with Windows Vista. Other answers included things like "you can shift-right-click to get the copy as path function instead" (read my Quickly Copy File and Folder Path in Windows Vista. Another claim was that the drag and drop feature was dropped because it poses a "security risk". Maybe, I don't know, but since it's been present since the days of older operating systems I don't see why it wasn't removed before if it was such a huge security risk.

You can imagine that I did not have high expectations set when I booted up my Windows 7 (currently beta build 7000) virtual machine and fired a CMD window. I tried dragging a file name onto the open CMD window, and behold, it works!

Other methods worth mentioning are also listed in my How can I quickly copy a file or a folder's path in Windows Vista? article which describes a trick that still works in Windows 7;

Open a Windows Explorer windows, browse to the required file. Hold the SHIFT key while you right-click the folder.

You can now paste the copied path anywhere you want, including to a Command Prompt window.

Installing Windows 7 in VMware Server

The next natural step is to check that you have downloaded the Windows 7 ISO from Microsoft and I'll assume that you already have VMware Server installed. If thats not the case, download them both now and get VMware Server installed. I'll be right here waiting for you when you return.

Got it sorted? Good. We'll continue with the issue at hand, installing Windows 7 in VMware Server.

First off, you need to create a new VM in the VMware server console. You do this by logging in to the VMware Server Web Interface and creating a new VM by clicking the "Create Virtual Machine" link in the "Commands" action pane:

Give your new Virtual Machine a name, select your datastore and click "next".

Since Windows 7 isn't officially supported by VMware yet, so you won't find it in the list of already predefined operating systems.

I recommend selecting the predefined Windows Server 2008 setup since that lets you install VMware Tools without problems after you are finished. I'll get back to what VMware Tools is and how they work a little bit later. Since I downloaded the 64bit ISO of Windows 7 so I selected the 64bit version.

Initially I recommend setting the memory setting 512MB, even if that's lower than the minimum 1 GB recommendation by Microsoft. Windows 7 will install fine with 512MB, and it's even pretty usable after installation. Of course, you always add more memory to the virtual machine later if you wish.

Create a new virtual disk and determine how much disk space you want to allocate to the Windows 7 installation. I created a 16GB partition.

On the next screen, add a Network Adapter and then select "Network Connection: Bridge" in the Network Properties Page.

Next you will need the previously downloaded Windows 7 ISO file. In the CD/DVD drive dialogue box click on "Use an ISO Image" and browse to the ISO file and mount it as a CDrom. Unless you have set up a predefined datastore for ISO files, you will need to copy the ISO into the location of your Virtual Machines (eg. your default datastore) before you can browse to it.

Installing Windows 7 in VMware Server 2.0

by Christian Mohn - February 19, 2009
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Introduction

To get started, you will need to get hold of the Windows 7 Beta installation media. Thankfully Microsoft has made this generally available for everyone, but with a couple of caveats;

The Windows 7 beta was available for download from Microsoft until February 10th, 2009 and it will stop working on August 1, 2009.
Sadly the download window has now passed, but you can still request a product key from the Windows 7 Customer Preview site. Hopefully someone you know has already downloaded it, and all you need is the product key.
You will not get any technical support from Microsoft while testing the product

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Normally, beta testing a new operating system would require you to have dedicated hardware resources available for testing. By using virtualization technology like VMware Server you can do this without having dedicated hardware or having to replace your existing operating system of choice.

Installing Windows 7 in VMware Server

The next natural step is to check that you have downloaded the Windows 7 ISO from Microsoft and I'll assume that you already have VMware Server installed. If thats not the case, download them both now and get VMware Server installed. I'll be right here waiting for you when you return.

Got it sorted? Good. We'll continue with the issue at hand, installing Windows 7 in VMware Server.

Give your new Virtual Machine a name, select your datastore and click "next".

Since Windows 7 isn't officially supported by VMware yet, so you won't find it in the list of already predefined operating systems.

Create a new virtual disk and determine how much disk space you want to allocate to the Windows 7 installation. I created a 16GB partition.

On the next screen, add a Network Adapter and then select "Network Connection: Bridge" in the Network Properties Page.

Don't add a Floppy Drive, you don't need one.

I didn't add a USB Controller in my particular setup, but you can easily include one if you want to be able to connect to USB resources on your host machine, inside the guest. If you decide you don't need one now, don't worry. You can always add one later if you wish.

Review your settings and click on finish.

That's the finale of the Virtual Machine setup wizard. Now power on your newly created VM and go to the "console" tab on the top. You should be greeted with the Windows 7 Installer.

Go through the installer as you normally would on a physical machine, including accepting the EULA. Luckily the Windows 7 installed doesn't ask that many questions during install so it won't take that long. On my test computer the installation took about 30 minutes, but the actual time it takes depends on the hardware you run VMware Server on.

Now that the installation has finished you are almost ready to start using your virtual Windows 7 instance. I would advise that you install VMware Tools immediately though. VMware Tools is a set of essential tools and drivers that will make your virtual experience much better, and in particular it will enable network connectivity in your Windows 7 install. A couple of other great side-effects of installing the tools are that you will get much improved video performance, copy and paste between your host and guest as well as mouse synchronization.

Installation is very easy, all you have to do is to navigate to VMware Server Console again, find your Windows 7 installation and click on the "Install VMware Tools" option. This will mount a virtual CD-Rom inside your Windows 7 installation and start the autorun procedure.

Switch to your Windows 7 console again and you should be able to start the setup procedure. Accept the default installation options, and after a quick reboot your should be ready to go.

Your virtualized Windows 7 install is now finished, and you should be able to use it as if it were installed on a physical machine. As far as the user experience goes, it does depend on what kind of resources you have available, but there is one part of Windows 7 you will not be able to experience by using VMware Server. Sadly it doesn't do accelerated 3D graphics, even with VMware Tools installed, so all the fancy Aero based eye-candy will not be available.