Ankit Kumar Agarwal

continued from chapter one.

Another addition to the Windows 7 taskbar is the jumplist. A jumplist is a personalized menu that may offer access to the program’s functions or recently/frequently used files. Since i’m talking about personalized menus, their content is, of course, decided by each application’s developer and will consequently vary. For example, while the Windows Explorer jumplist displays a list of frequently and recently accessed locations, the Internet Explorer jumplist will display your browser’s history.

As for new stylish elements in this operating system, I should mention that most progress bars will now be viewable from the taskbar, so you won’t need to focus on a window just to find out how much progress has been made. You will notice another eye-catching feature when hovering over the taskbar icon of an opened application – the lightning effect that highlights the pointer’s position.

Naturally, the taskbar and Start Menu properties haven’t been left unchanged either. Improvements have been made especially to the Start Menu options, which now allow you to customize it in a manner that, had it been available in previous Windows operating systems, it could have been achieved only through registry tweaks.

What’s in and what’s out

Fans of Windows Movie Maker will probably be surprised to find out that this component, along with Windows Mail and Windows Photo Gallery, is no longer bundled in Windows 7. Don’t worry, you can always download them from Windows Live.

Of course, Microsoft couldn’t have removed applications without adding a few new ones as well. A pretty useful software is Windows DVD Maker that allows you to create your very own multimedia DVD. Although the program is easy to use and offers a straightforward procedure for burning your video, music and graphic files to a DVD, it also enables you to customize various DVD settings, such as its menu, video format or DVD aspect ratio.

There are also a few other, smaller, additions like the Sticky Notes, Snipping Tool, and even a long awaited Disc Image Burning Tool. Unfortunately, none of these utilities is advanced, but if you’re looking for some basic operations, they are surely the handiest solution.

Changes in Windows programs

The basic changes that you can easily discover by just browsing for a few minutes are as follows. Wordpad and Paint have been enhanced a bit, in that they now employ the ribbon interface. You’ll be using the beta version of Internet Explorer 8 and a not-yet-released for download version 12 of Windows Media Player. Windows Calculator now features Programmer and Statistics modes, and includes date calculation and unit conversion functionality as well.

Windows Search functions on a much more improved engine, as compared to the one available at this moment in/for Vista. A less important optimization, but still worth mentioning, is the ability to resize the length of the search bar in Windows Explorer.
Last but not least in our list of changes that would probably interest any average user are the Control Panel additions. You’ll notice a few new items: ClearType Text Tuner, Credential Manager, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Location and Other Sensors, Recovery, System Icons, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Biometric Devices, Windows Solution Center.

Windows Solution Center is the replacement of the Windows Security Center currently available in Windows Vista and XP. It will now provide access to the system’s security components (virus, network access and spyware protection, firewall, UAC, automatic updates, etc.), but also to maintenance tasks such as Windows Backup, System Restore or Troubleshooting.

Conclusion

After my quick tour in Windows 7, I find myself very enthusiastic about it. Unfortunately, there is always a “but” that follows this type of statements. Windows 7 improves or introduces cool, new features like jumplists and thumbnails, but you won’t be able to fully enjoy them on non-native Windows 7 applications. Don’t expect the tab trick to work on the current version of Firefox or Maxthon and, sadly, the same goes for the play control of Winamp, for example. Not yet, at least.

Homegroups are a great way to share files, but please remember they are a Windows 7 feature, so you won’t be able to use them with your friends and colleagues using Vista or XP.

Last but not least in our list of changes that would probably interest any average user are the Control Panel additions. You’ll notice a few new items: ClearType Text Tuner, Credential Manager, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Location and Other Sensors, Recovery, System Icons, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Biometric Devices, Windows Solution Center.

Windows Solution Center is the replacement of the Windows Security Center currently available in Windows Vista and XP. It will now provide access to the system’s security components (virus, network access and spyware protection, firewall, UAC, automatic updates, etc.), but also to maintenance tasks such as Windows Backup, System Restore or Troubleshooting.

WINDOWS 7:worth installing?? (ch-1)
WINDOWS 7:worth installing?? (ch-2)