Wednesday, January 14, 2009

New Windows 7 Gestures

I just found an interesting new gesture in Windows 7 which I think could be rather handy at times, especially with touch screens. If you've got a bunch of windows open on your desktop (like pretty much anyone does all of the time) and you want to clear the crud out of the way so you can concentrate on one window, grab its title bar and shake it around. Woot - it minimizes all other windows. To restore them all again, just shake this window again! Nice, eh? Let's do the "Aero Shake"! :)

A couple of other gestures, while I'm at it, that could be handy are the "maximize" which is performed by dragging the window to the top of the screen and releasing it, clicking on the title bar will restore it to its former size and position, and the "left or right" which is achieved by dargging a window to the left- or right-side of the display which will "half maximize" the window, allowing the easy side-by-side display of two windows. Unfortunately, the latter gesture isn't really working well with multiple-display systems as only the extreme left- and right-sides of the whole display woork with this gesture.

Of course, there are loads more, including "Aero Peek" with the box on the right hand end of the new Superbar.

I do like the new interface - and considering Vista's interface was its one strong point, this is a really good thing! :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

2 comments:

stryqx said...

Some more Windows 7 Shortcuts can be found here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx

David said...

Just checked out the link posted by Chris Knight. There is a keyboard approach to the "half maximize" docking of a window in a multi-display system:

Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow: These "dock" the window on the left or right side of the active screen. You can use these to make a window jump to the other display, too, which is pretty cool -- just keep pressing Windows+Right Arrow and see what happens.