Submitted by Based on all the user feedback ignited by the Windows 7 beta, Microsoft has made a set of tweaks to the release candidate of Windows 7. The Engineering 7 weblog details 36 of those tweaks, in quite some detail actually. Let’s take a look at some interesting ones.
The Aero Peek feature has been received quite positively, as it really can be quite useful when working with lots and lots of windows. It reminds me a lot of Expose – not in how it works, but in how useful it is. When I first heard about Expose, my reaction was “meh”. It felt like useless eye candy for Apple Store owners. However, as soon as you started using Expose, it became clear it’s a massively useful feature, and I still consider it one of the best additions to window management since, like, forever. Aero Peek falls in the same category: looks gimmicky at first, but once you’re used to it, you don’t want to live without it. In the RC a much-requested addition has been made: Aero Peek can now also be triggered by the alt+tab switcher.
Another addition that really makes me happy (and I’m sure lots of other users as well), is the ability to drag/drop a file on a task bar item and have it open the dropped file in the program you dropped it on. For instance, if you have Notepad pinned to your taskbar, and you drop a html file on it, it will open that file in Notepad. This behaviour is not default, however; you need to press shift as a modifier. Still, a very welcome addition, as it allows for an easy way to open fiels with non-default applications.
In earlier Windows versions, the Win+e command launched an Explorer window located at My Computer. In the Windows 7 beta, this often-used command started in the Libraries view instead, which didn’t make an awful lot of sense for many people. In the RC, the behaviour is back to default: Win+E opens an Explorer window at My Computer(or Computer as it’s called these days).
A small but funny one: the on-screen keyboard now supports multitouch. In previous builds, the on-screen keyboard wasn’t multitouch aware, which kind of made typing rather weird. Now you can type with them as if it were a real keyboard (I’m not serious, of course; typing on a touch screen will always be cumbersome).
There’s more in the list, but they reiterate it’s just a selection.
It should also be noted that this list is far from a complete change log. These 36 items were just the ones that were most requested and MS is showing that it did listen. Since the beta there have been hundreds of small under the hood changes (more actually).
How is this any different from dragging files and dropping them onto shortcuts to apps? Like you’ve been able to do since Windows 95 first introduced shortcuts?
Even works with the icons on the QuickLaunch toolbar.
Edited 2009-02-26 22:37 UTC
The problem is that that was IMPOSSIBLE in Windows 7 beta
. No it IS possible.
Ah, so they restored functionality that they had removed.
I’ve not tried the Windows 7 beta whatsoever. Does it support dropping files onto already running program’s task icon? Vista still doesn’t seem to let you do it. XP used to come up with an error if you dropped something onto a taskbar icon IIRC.
I like “Windows Logo + <#> keyboard shortcut” the most. Really would be handy in Leopard, too. OS X still is just a bit too mouse focused. In my opinion every good app and every good system (I still love my Leopard, don’t get me wrong here) should be able to be controlled entirely by mouse and/or entirely by keyboard. Just look at Opera with its gestures and fantastic keyboard navigation.
Keyboard shortcuts is the #1 reason why I rather use Windows on a laptop instead of OSX on a laptop. OSX has gotten better in this regard, but out of the box there are still some Ok/Cancel message boxes that force me to reach for a mouse/trackpad.
To be fair, I see a lot of those on Windows too, especially in apps with a lot of custom widgets. I see it in GNOME as well… come to think of it, I think I’ve seen that issue in every os I’ve tried in the past few years. As far as OS X goes, make sure you’ve enabled full keyboard access and set tab to highlight all elements, this is not its default behavior although, imho, it should be.
Most developers just do not take keyboard access into account whatsoever, though I wish it were otherwise. The os itself, unfortunately, can only do so much in this area.
ive found both OS’s to be the same when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, for the tasks i perform on my computer i find all the shortcuts i need.
“7. Newly installed programs
^aEURoeCustomer in control^aEUR is so strong a mantra for Windows 7 we don^aEURTMt even allow programs to pin themselves to the taskbar when they are installed. This is a task expressly reserved for the customer.”
Sounds like a good idea, actually. Now, if only they’d extend that to the system tray, instead of just hiding all the programs running down there, zapping system resources, actually prevent them from starting up at boot until the user verifies that it’s ok. Otherwise, just take it as, “sorry, you’re not allowed to run unless explicitly started by the user.”
How about they extend that to all startup programs, be it in the registry, or services, or startup group. No program may automatically run after it is installed unless the user allows it, period.
Well, that’s kind of what I mean. So many programs have themselves (or some worthless part of themselves) set to start up in the taskbar, which tends to be at startup most of the time.
It’s bad enough that Windows software “installers” are executables in their own right, requiring full admin privileges which grants them full power on the system, and the only way to make sure they won’t do what you don’t want is to not run it. Meanwhile, Windows has no internal capability to block these attempts at unwanted and/or unnecessary taskbar and startup processes.
It’s be a good way to block malware and viruses from starting at boot as well, and it’s not like Microsoft can’t whitelist software from security or other “trusted” companies. Not that I trust security companies to begin with, anyway.
Edited 2009-02-27 18:36 UTC
If Microsoft is working on Windows Release Candidate, the release of Windows 7 cannot be very far. Hopefully the Vista customers would get some sort of discount.
I for one am looking forward to the RC. I read somewhere today that one of Microsoft’s major partners or something like that let leak the fact that W7 will be out some time around October or something like that…right in time for the holidays it seems.
I was so hoping to read.
20. Improved keyboard support for video content
Some of our customers complained about the stupid Ctrl-P behaviour for pausing that we have had since WMP7. They also wondered why the video was seeeking so far ahead, when the keyboard commands for mplayer had far superior controls right from the start.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
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I love using Media Player Classic, but it’s look is getting old for my taste. Whereas the new WMP of Win7 is so nice. Even MPC keyboard commands are superior to MSWMP.
Edited 2009-02-27 06:41 UTC