{"id":1513,"date":"2009-01-13T21:58:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T21:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets\/"},"modified":"2009-01-13T21:58:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T21:58:28","slug":"the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/tims\/archive\/2009\/01\/12\/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx\">this great list<\/a> of Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Secrets by Tim Sneath.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a few of them, so be sure to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/tims\/archive\/2009\/01\/12\/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx\">the full list here<\/a> for the full 30 Windows 7 Secrets!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #0080c0;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0a8da5;\">Windows Management.<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>By now, you\u2019ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can \u201cdock\u201d a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top \/ bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Win+Left Arrow <\/strong>and <strong>Win+Right Arrow <\/strong>dock;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Win+Up Arrow <\/strong>and <strong>Win+Down Arrow <\/strong>maximizes and restores \/ minimizes;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Win+Shift+Up Arrow <\/strong>and <strong>Win+Shift+Down Arrow <\/strong>maximizes and restores the vertical size.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors \u2013 it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #0a8da5;\">The Black Box Recorder.<\/span> <\/strong>Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they\u2019re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit \u201crecord\u201d, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based \u201cslide show\u201d of the steps. It\u2019s a really neat little tool and I can\u2019t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called <strong>psr.exe<\/strong>; you can also search for it from Control Panel under \u201cRecord steps to reproduce a problem\u201d.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #0a8da5;\">I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back!<\/span> <\/strong>You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it\u2019s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you\u2019re after the retro behavior, you\u2019ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:\n<ul>\n<li>Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars \/ New Toolbar<\/li>\n<li>In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:<br \/>\n<strong>%userprofile%\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Quick Launch<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Turn off the \u201clock the taskbar\u201d setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that \u201cShow text\u201d and \u201cShow title\u201d are disabled and the view is set to \u201csmall icons\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If it\u2019s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it\u2019s worth noting that this isn\u2019t something we\u2019re exactly <em>desperate <\/em>for folks to re-enable, but it\u2019s there if you really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we\u2019d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn\u2019t suit your needs.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #0a8da5;\">Windows Movie Maker.<\/span> <\/strong>Windows 7 doesn\u2019t include a movie editing tool \u2013 it\u2019s been moved to the Windows Live Essentials package, along with Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we\u2019re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options. It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version). It\u2019s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn\u2019t support HD editing, but it\u2019s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing.\u00a0 Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from here:<br \/>\n<a title=\"http:\/\/microsoft.com\/downloads\/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc\" href=\"http:\/\/microsoft.com\/downloads\/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc\">http:\/\/microsoft.com\/downloads\/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc<\/a>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #0a8da5;\">Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon.<\/span> <\/strong>Hopefully your first act after Windows 7 setup completed was to download and install the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications (if not, then you\u2019re missing out on a significant part of the Windows experience). If you\u2019re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone. the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it\u2019s been for previous releases. If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior. To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out this great list of Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Secrets by Tim Sneath.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a few of them, so be sure to check out the full list here for the full 30 Windows 7 Secrets! Windows Management. By now, you\u2019ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can \u201cdock\u201d a window to<\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"pull-left padding-top-25\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets\/\" class=\"btn btn-theme\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets&#8221;<\/span> <i class=\"fa fa-fw fa-long-arrow-right\"><\/i> <\/a>  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darrenstraight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}