Windows 7 Taskbar in detail

first look I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta over the weekend and have spent the last couple of days putting it through the paces. And, even though it is only at the first Beta stage, I must say that I'm pretty impressed with what I have experienced so far.

At this point, Windows 7 appears to be a solid and stable operating system with all the features that you would expect in a beta 2 or release candidate version.

There are a lot of things in the Windows 7 operating system that are pretty much the same as in Vista, but there are also a lot of new and exciting features and changes. Regardless of how stable this version seems, it is still a beta so I won't really tackle any performance issues — I'll wait till we get closer to the real deal. In this article, I'll take a look at one of the features in Windows 7 that really jumped out at me — the new Taskbar.

The new Taskbar
When you first boot up Windows 7, your eyes immediately focus on the Start button and the Taskbar. The Start button and the Start menu are basically the same as in Vista, but Microsoft really revamped the Taskbar. To begin with, the Taskbar no longer displays text adjacent to each icon. Furthermore, the Taskbar is twice the height that it was before.

The next thing that I noticed was that the Quick Launch bar, first introduced in Windows 95, is gone. At first, this absence was a real shocker because I have grown quite accustomed to the Quick Launch bar and I depend on it for access to several common tools. However, once I began using the new Taskbar, I quickly forgot all about the Quick Launch bar because now the Taskbar itself acts as both a place to launch common applications as well as access running tasks.

In fact, in this beta, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player icons all live on the Taskbar right next to the Start button by default, as shown in Figure A. And, you can drag and drop any application's icon onto the Taskbar just like you could in the Quick Launch bar. As such, even though the Quick Launch bar is gone, you still have the same functionality.

Figure A

Building on this concept of making the Taskbar act as both a place to launch common applications and a place to access running tasks, the default icons, and any icons that you add to the taskbar, not only allow you to launch the application, they also serve as the task icon. For example, once you launch Internet Explorer using the icon on the Taskbar, that same icon transforms into the task icon that you use to switch back and forth between applications.

The task icons will also use a stack concept to show you how many open windows, or in the case of Internet Explorer how many tabs, are open by the application.

The Live Taskbar thumbnails feature, first introduced in Vista, has also been dramatically revamped as well as endowed with new capabilities in Windows 7. To begin with, it builds on the stack concept in that when you hover you mouse pointer over a task icon that's showing a stack, you'll see thumbnails for each window or tab, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Furthermore, when you hover you mouse pointer over any active task icon you'll see a small thumbnail, but when you hover your mouse pointer over the thumbnail, it will immediately expand to fill the screen. This feature is called Aero Peek, because this capability to dependent on the Aero UI and it allows you to essentially take a peek at a window without actually switching windows. However, if you click on a small or large thumbnail and you'll instantly switch to that task. Click the close button on the thumbnail, and you'll close the window or the application.

Another capability of the Internet Explore icon is that it can indicate progress of a download, as shown in Figure C. This capability will most likely show up in other progress intensive applications.

Figure C

The new Taskbar also incorporates a new feature called Jump Lists. Designed to make it easier to find what you want and perform common operations associated with an application, Jump Lists appear on the Start menu as well as on the Taskbar when you right click on an icon. For example, the Jump List for Windows Media Player will show frequently used operations, most recent music selections as well as some common tasks, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

One handy feature of the Quick Launch bar that might appear to have slipped through the cracks is the Show Desktop icon. However, that same functionality is now enhanced by Aero Peek and accessed by hovering you mouse pointer over a small, innocuous button in the far right hand corner of the screen adjacent to the clock. When you do, all open windows on the desktop instantly become transparent with only faint outline remaining, as shown in Figure E, and you can see the desktop.

Figure E

What do you think about Windows 7's new Taskbar? Have you downloaded the Windows 7 Beta? Please post your comments below this article and let us hear from you.

All images are credited to Greg Shultz, TechRepublic. Greg Shultz is a Documentation Specialist for MediaBank. Previously, he worked as technical journalist in the computer publishing industry