NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, October 2009
Exploring Microsoft Windows 7 Beta 1
Part III: What I've Discovered About Windows 7 (A)

Written by Lee Reynolds,
Contributing Editor, Boca Raton Computer Society, Florida Boca Bits, May 2009

http://www.bcrs.org
leetutor (at) earthlink.net (click to email author)

This article has been obtained from APCUG with the author’s permission for publication by APCUG member groups; all other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).

Lee continues an overview of what the new operating system might look like, as well as what it is likely to have for features.

This time around we are going to take a look at the new aero effects of Windows 7.

New Aero Effects

AERO SHAKE
Let's open a few windows onto your Desktop to show some of the new Aero capabilities built into Windows 7. We'll put several of them there, all partially on top of one another.

Figure 1 – Three Windows Before Aero Shake

Suppose you wanted to see the window where the mouse cursor is, which is partially obscured by a couple of other windows that are open. If you just click where the mouse is, then that window would come to the forefront, just as in previous versions of Windows.

Suppose as you click with the mouse on that window you shake it back and forth a couple of times, left and right. Magically all the other windows minimize to the Taskbar, and you are left with only the one you wanted to look at.

Figure 2 – After Aero Shake

A bit quicker than making numerous clicks to minimize or close all the other windows! This feature of Windows 7 is called "Aero Shake", but that's only half of it.

If you now shake the one open window left and right a couple of times, all the other windows that were open but partially obscured appear back on the screen.

AERO SNAP
The screenshot (Figure 3) shows two windows open, one partially behind the other. Note that they are two views of similar text documents that have been opened in Windows Notepad.

Take the one on the left, put your mouse near the lefthand side of the Title bar and drag it over to the left until the mouse just barely touches the left edge of your screen. A faint outline of half the Desktop shows up.

If you release the mouse button, then the window that you moved toward the left side of the screen resizes and fills up that half of the screen!

Now take the window on the right, put your mouse near the right-hand side of the Title bar and drag it over to the right until the mouse just barely touches the right edge of your screen. Then the faint outline of the right half of your Desktop shows up, and when you release the mouse button the window will resize itself to the right half of your Desktop. Very easy to see the two windows side by side for comparison purposes, for example.

Figure 3 – Two Notepad Windows

Figure 4 – After Aero Snap

But that's not all there is to Aero Snap. Now let's open a single window of our display of a text document through Notepad, and next drag it to the top edge of the screen, until the mouse barely touches it. A faint outline of the entire Desktop shows up, and if we release the mouse button, then magically, the Notepad window maximizes to fill the screen!

(Of course, this works with any window, not just a Notepad window.) Finally, if we drag the maximized window downward away from the top edge, and let it go, it returns to its previous size.

One more thing about the Aero Snap feature: there are shortcut keys for these effects if you would prefer to use the keyboard rather than a mouse:

• Windows key and Up Arrow - same as Maximize window
• Windows key and Down Arrow - same as Restore window
• Windows key and Left Arrow - same as display on left half of desktop
• Windows key and Right Arrow - same as display on right half of desktop.

AERO PEEK
The Aero Peek feature has a number of characteristics. It is particularly useful if you have a number of windows open on your screen. Each of the windows will of course correspond to a Taskbar button.

Some of the Taskbar buttons will appear to be several layers deep (one button behind another, like a row of dominoes), if you have multiple instances of the program open at the same time. If you have several tabs open in Internet Explorer 8, there will be a button for each of the tabs. When this is true, there is a little upward pointing arrow to the right of the taskbar icon which you can use to choose which of the program instances you want to work with.

Hovering over a Taskbar button (one which is not a pseudo Quick Launch button) without clicking it will open up a miniature image preview of that window over the Taskbar.

If you hover over any of those miniature image previews, then all other windows that are open on your screen become transparent and you see only the window whose image preview you are hovering your mouse over.

It is like you can peek through all the other windows to see that one window. (Of course, that is why the feature is called Aero Peek.)

So if you wanted to see what is in a window without transferring control over to it, you can very easily do so. If you actually click on one of those image previews, it becomes the active window.

You can also close a window (or a tab, in the case of an Internet Explorer Taskbar button) by clicking on the small "X" icon in the image preview.

Another part of Aero Peek is the replacement for the "Show Desktop" icon in the Quick Launch bar of previous versions of Windows. This is a small rectangle at the right end of the Taskbar.

If you hover your mouse over this area, you will see a tooltip reading "Show desktop", but also it will show you an image of your Desktop overlaid with rectangular outlines of any windows you might have open covering parts of the Desktop. So it is as if you are peeking behind all the open windows to see the Desktop.

If you actually click that rectangular area, rather than just hover over it, then it will act like the Show Desktop icon of previous Windows versions: all windows minimize to the Taskbar and you see your Desktop.

You can also right click the Show Desktop area of the Windows 7 Taskbar and it will give you a context menu from which you can choose one of the options: Preview Desktop, or Show Desktop.

Unfortunately, the Preview Desktop does not work (in fact, it shows as “greyed out” on the context menu) in the Virtual Pc environment. The screenshot in Figure 5 shows this:

Figure 5 – Show Desktop

Coming in Part IV
In the next installment, we will be covering: The Start Menu And Its Properties Taskbar Properties Control Panel

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