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This spotlight will focus squarely on the brand new taskbar for Windows 7.  While the new taskbar isn’t complicated by any stretch of the imagination, it will be a little difficult to explain.  It’s definitely one those things you have to use yourself to get a good feel for it.  So let’s dive right in, shall we?

Meet your new taskbar:

Initially, it simply looks like the Vista taskbar with large, oversized quicklaunch icons.  If this is what you were thinking, then you’re correct.  Sort of.

What’s different about this new taskbar is that these icons now also represent open programs as well.  Before, you’d open a window, and a slot would appear on the taskbar with a small icon and the title of the window.  Now, it will only be represented by an icon.  So how can you tell the difference between an open program and a simple quicklaunch icon?  Easy, a translucent box is formed around the icon:

As you see in the picture above, I now have an IE8 window running, and the icon on the far right is my WLW (Windows Live Writer) program that is running (both are minimized).  If one of these programs has focus (i.e. you are currently using it and interacting with it), the box will fill in with some fancy glass/translucent graphics.  As you may have deduced already, if you have an icon pinned to the taskbar, it acts as quicklaunch.  If you open a program that is not already pinned to the taskbar, it’s icon will show up, and the translucent box will surround it, indicating a currently running program.  You can pin any programs you wish to the taskbar in order for them to act as a quicklaunch icon.

Simply clicking on the icons as you see above will open the currently running program (or a new instance of that program if one is not already running).

So what if you have a program pinned to the taskbar as a quicklaunch icon, you already have that program running, and you want to open another instance of the program as a separate window?  As of right now, if you have an IE8 window already open, and you want to open another, clicking on that IE8 icon will simply open the currently running window.  All you have to do is right-click that icon, and there’s an option to open another instance of it.  This is a big point of contention against the new taskbar by beta testers due to the fact that it now takes an extra click to open another instance, so we’ll see if this changes in the future.

When you finally do manage to open a second instance of the same program, does it add a second icon to the taskbar?  Nope.  It indicates multiple windows open by “collating” the icon, or showing a stack of icons, so to speak.  Here we can see I have 3 IE8 windows running at the same time:

This subtle effect lets you know you have multiple windows open.  So how do choose which particular window you want open?  After all, there’s only one icon to click for 3 different windows.  This is made easy by popping open a quick view of each window, which automatically shows if you click that one IE8 icon:

This shows the 3 IE8 windows I have open, and a simple click on one of those will open it.  Once again, this is causing a few people to hate the new taskbar, simply because it takes an extra click to open a window if you have multiple instances running.  Definitely a valid concern in my opinion, although I don’t mind it personally.  If a user had window grouping turned on in Windows XP, this same idea is applied, so some may not even notice a difference.

As you can also see in the above picture, you’ll notice that I’ve opened Paint (it’s how I cropped the screen above), as it’s icon is over on the right side.  So in the picture, you can see that I have multiple IE8 windows running, WLW running, and Paint running.  The 3 icons that show and aren’t running are my other quicklaunch programs, Windows Explorer (the way you view your file structure), Windows Mail (the free email program from Microsoft), and the Zune software (my media player of choice).  If a program is open and it’s icon isn’t pinned to the taskbar as a quicklaunch icon, it will disappear once you close the program.

All in all, it’s a fairly simple new system, which acts a lot like Mac OSX’s dock.  For better or for worse, this is the direction Windows 7 is taking.  I personally like it.  I feel that it’s a nice change from a completely cluttered taskbar with multiple windows open.  It’s easy to see which programs are running and which are not and are acting as quicklaunch icons.  If you don’t like the large gaudy icons, there is an option for smaller icons.

I should also close by saying that you can change this taskbar to act somewhat like the taskbar of old, complete with text and separate icons for each separate program/window open.  But what fun is that?

Check back soon for the third feature spotlight.

Personal Musings