Windows 7 Beta to RC Changes

The engineers working on the next version of Windows, Windows 7 has posted some changes that will be reflected in the RC (Release Candidate) of Windows 7 that differ from the Beta of Windows 7. Below are a few of the highlights:

Desktop Experience
Windows Flip (ALT + TAB) with Aero Peek
Weve received overwhelmingly positive feedback about Aero Peek and how it helps customers switch windows with increased confidence. Daniel wrote to tell us Im wondering why Peek was never implemented for the ALT + TAB window. The thumbnails look/behave the same way as the taskbar thumbnails when you hover the mouse over them. It seems logical that they would exhibit the peek behavior, too. We decided to make this change since we heard many requests for it. One can still quickly flip between and cycle through running windows using the ALT+TAB keys, but when more window information is needed Aero Peek will appear. This is triggered by a time delay as you pause while keyboarding through running windows.

Needy State
Needy window is the internal term we use for a window that requires your attention. Since the 90s, the taskbar has always provided some type of visualization to alert the customer to this state such as by flashing the button. A careful balance must be struck between providing information and not irritating the customer. With the new taskbar, we received feedback that Outlook reminders or a Messenger chat sometimes went unnoticed because needy windows were too subtle. For example, Mudassir opened a bug to say The flashing is not obvious enough to get user's attention. Sometime I don't even notice it. It flashes for a little bit and then stops. If I am away the icon flashes and stops before I come back. The icon is not noticeable. Weve made three changes that should address the issue. First, we changed the flashing animation curve to make it more noticeable (from a sine to a sawtooth wave). Second, we used a bolder orange color. Finally, we wanted to double the number of flashes which is currently set to three. As a nod to Windows 7, we decided to go with seven flashes instead.

Taskbar Open With
Quick Launch always supported the ability to drop a file onto a pinned program and have it open with that program. The new taskbar on the other hand, always treats a drop as a pin command. Drop a program and the program is pinned. Drop a file and the file will be pinned under its respective programs Jump List and that program automatically gets pinned to the taskbar. It was important for us to keep drag/drop consistent. We believe that for most cases people will open files through the desktop by just double-clicking them or from the Jump List and the default program will open. However, there are some scenarios when a customer wants to open a certain file type with another program. We heard this feedback and decided to revive Open With drag/drop on the taskbar with a keyboard modifier. One can hold down SHIFT and drop the file on the desired program.

Anchoring taskbar thumbnails
Hovering or clicking on a taskbar button surfaces all the running windows for that program. Upon seeing a set of open thumbnails, Kozlow asked How do I know which application has opened the thumbnails group? In other words, the thumbnails didnt appear visually connected to the taskbar. We made a visual update that now keeps the color hot-track effect on when the mouse is over a thumbnail. In fig 2 you can see that IE retains its blue Color Hot-track visual even though the mouse is over a thumbnail.

TF Note: We think this is a nice feature, it even show's 'favicon' for web site icons.

Locking a machine without a screensaver
It isnt uncommon for IT administrators to want their corporate machines to auto-lock after a certain amount of time. In Beta, enabling this functionality required a screensaver to be set. Weve since made a change to allow this functionality even when no screensaver is specified.

Resume from sleep
Customers are used to resuming a CD or DVD after an interruption. With customers choosing new low-cost, smaller form-factor, machines without optical drives, an increasingly popular scenario is to have content played directly from the hard drive. In Beta, it was not possible to resume playback on such content after a laptop goes to sleep. Customers assume the experience should match that of physical media so we fixed the experience to meet this expectation.

Increased audio reliability
In some cases people reported not having any audio device after installing Beta. The problem is that some audio hardware does not work out of the box with our inbox audio class driver. Amazingly there are over 26,000 custom audio drivers and while many are on Windows Update, many are still not. The Release Candidate tightens the Windows Logo test to better ensure clean install delivers baseline functionality for speakers and microphones. Furthermore, we will continue to populate Windows Update with frequently needed drivers.

FAT32 support
Local FAT32 hard disk drives were not support in libraries for Beta. RC libraries will now support non-removable FAT32 and NTFS hard disk drives thanks to the feedback we received.

For the full list of changes, please see the Windows 7 Team Blog