First Look: Windows 7 User Interface

Day 2′s keynote at the Professional Developers Conference just ended 15 minutes ago, and a lot has been revealed about Windows 7. The biggest change in the User Interface since Windows 95 would lie in the taskbar. A lot of work has also been done to improve the way you’ll manage your windows. Below we will discuss the many new changes that have come to the Windows 7 User Interface. Unfortunately, the build used in the presentation was 6933.winmain.081020-1842, so many of the presented features will not be available in the pre-beta that will be handed out to PDC attendees. Let’s start with the biggest change from Vista in the Windows 7 UI.

Taskbar:

Gone are the days where rectangular boxes containing the application icon and description will rest in the taskbar. The new Windows 7 taskbar will behave similarly to the Mac Dock, sporting big icons that are re-arrangeable. Hovering over one will show you thumbnails and descriptions of the windows you have open of that particular application, and will let you select one to open.

Source: Neowin

Hovering over Windows Media Player seems to include additional options to skip, play, and pause tracks. Where did volume control go?

Jumplists:

You can access an application’s “jumplist” by right clicking the icon in the taskbar. This new UI device provides quick access to application features. In the case of most applications, the most recent and frequently used files will be shown. However, the jumplist is also customizable per application by the developer. It would be nice to allow users to customize the options as well but I haven’t heard anything about that. In the picture above, Windows Media Player specific jumplist options are available too.

Here’s another photo of jumplists in action from the Start Menu.

Check out the awesome Windows orb – I just love it.

Window Management:

This was one of Microsoft’s bigger concerns as well. After collecting data from their Customer Experience Improvement Program, it was clear that for most of the time, most people preferred using one to two windows at the same time. To address this issue, they have made it easier to resize and organize windows.

Dragging a window all the way to the top will automatically maximize it. Dragging it off the top of the screen will restore it. Dragging it off to the left or right edge of the screen will automatically resize it to take up 50% of the screen. This is great for people who do a lot of research work, or video and image editing.

Here’s a video from Neowin demonstrating these new features:

Window Peeking:

As the name implies, you can “peek” at a Window without actually interacting with it. When you hover over a Window in the taskbar, it will turn every window into an outline except the one you’re pointing to, allowing you to “peek” at the window without actually opening it. You can finally go on Digg without being too obvious.

Here’s an awesome example of how Window peeking can be useful. You can view your gadgets just by hovering over the Desktop icon in the taskbar. Gadgets will no longer require you to sacrifice a a good portion of your viewing area just to use them.

Windows Explorer:

A few minor improvements were made to the Windows Explorer interface. The focus remains in letting you have quicker access to different options to have the files displayed or arranged in the way they prefer. Libraries is a new feature that helps you better manage documents. It allows you to create a collection of media such as pictures, photos, and music, so you can access the collection even if they are stored in many different locations. The library is basically a giant shortcut folder. The new way Windows 7 shows previews for each folder is much better than before, so you can recognize folders much more easily without actually opening them.

System Tray:

The system tray in Windows 7 gives you complete control over which icons to display. By default, new tray icons are hidden and invisible. They’ve also improved accessibility and by that, I mean finally being able to connect to a WiFi hotspot straight from the system tray without having to open another additional window. And if you’re wondering why the system tray arrow is pointing up…

Source: Gizmodo

You also have a lot more functionality as to how you want your system-tray to behave:

Federated Search:

Federated Search focuses on searching across networks and many PCs. It also can be used for searching on computers running Windows Server 2008 and establish a direct intranet connection. The main improvement that will affect everybody is direct preview.

Windows Theme Customization:

Windows 7 now allows you to customize your own appearance settings and arrange them into theme sets.

Device Stage:

Device Stage is a new way to manage and share devices on Windows 7. Device Stage is part of the explorer and allows a vendor to demonstrate the abilities of a specific device through the many possible abilities the device can perform. All content is provided by the vendor, so not all devices will be available to use Device Stage, although I imagine most companies would go for Device Stage support.

UAC Improvements:

Source: Gizmodo

Microsoft has finally added settings to allow you to control the behaviour of the much-dreaded User Access Control (UAC) feature. There are four-tiers of security in total. You can now choose the setting that best fits you.

Judging from these UI improvements alone, Windows 7 is on the right track to being a major improvement from Vista. As I had mentioned before, Microsoft’s best bet against Apple is to improve something that will affect the everyday use of the computer – the User Interface. It seems evident that Microsoft’s goal is to improve rather than change the way we work on Windows. Microsoft is still careful as to how much they reveal to us to avoid delivering broken promises. As we are introduced to later builds, I’m sure Microsoft will reveal more improvements focused on the internal functioning of the operating system. But for now, Windows 7 looks well on its way to becoming a major release.

Related posts:

1. A look at Windows 7 Screen Docking features
2. Windows 7 FAQ Updated
3. More changes from Windows 7 Beta to RC revealed