Paradox Designs

Windows 7 was announced today, if you can call it that. While knowledge about some of the operating system’s features has been out for months, this is the first time screenshots and any real meat has been released.

Among other things, 7 features a new interface, performance gains^[1], time saving features, and many other fixes. What particularly interests me is the new Taskbar. Instead of merely holding running programs and toolbars, it holds tasks, icons, and many other things, a la OS X Dock. Window titles can be moved around^[2], and the division between Quick Launch toolbar, the taskbar, and the system tray has been blurred. Additionally, each entry in the start menu now has a Jump Menu, which lets you repeat frequent tasks. The Windows Search has been refined, and now uses learning, much like application launchers, to determine what you want to do.

Many window management features, a la Exposé, are added to the system, triggered by hot corners^[3]. These include making all windows transparent, letting you see the desktop, and making a single window maximized.

Read about Windows 7:Webmonkey: The 7 Coolest New Features in Windows 7 Footnotes:

1. Read: lower system specs, you can run it on an older computer, unlike vista [↩]
2. A feature that any Window’s user can attain now through Taskbar Shuffle [↩]
3. You move your mouse into a corner of the display and leave it there for a few seconds, triggering an action [↩]