Cool video of awesome new Windows 7 taskbar

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 07:00

Opinion and Analysis

At this stage, the superbar preview does not show you the different tabs in Firefox or Google Chrome, but does show them to you if you have different instances of FF or Chrome open – surely this will be fixed in future builds.

The new taskbar is an excellent update to the taskbar and the first time I really prefer the whole “grouping” of icons thing. I’ve never really liked it before even though it’s been possible for years – but with the new taskbar and Aero peek… it’s great!

So, back to those videos. First there is an air hockey game being played on a touch screen. It’s “a little buggy” as you’ll see when watching the clip but this is being blamed on a driver issue rather than Windows 7 – it is still only in beta, after all.

The second video comes from a Windows 7 session and you get to see a demo of “different colours hovering over applications in the new Windows 7 taskbar.”

The third video is a “full 5 minute demonstration of "Aero Peek" which allows you to peek through various parts of Windows 7 to clearly see windows that are hidden behind and their content.”

Finally you get to see the Windows 7 boot screen which looks is different from Vista in that it has a “Starting Windows” message with a pulsating progress bar.

The new taskbar is something that we’ll hopefully see copied in some way by Apple and Linux distros, if not by the companies themselves, then by third parties who are likely already busily creating Mac and Linux versions.

Purists might not want it but it’s looking pretty damn good to me and I’m definitely looking forward to the 6933 build when the superbar will be even better!