One feature of the Windows 7 user experience that wasn’t demoed or even talked about last week at PDC 2008 is called “Aero Shake” – the same feature that led Rafael on an epic journey to unravel the secrets of build 6801 superbar. What Aero Shake does is allows you to shake your application windows furiously, to quickly minimize all other windows, at the same time experiencing a seizure in your hand.
It’s a pretty cool feature that I can see some practical use for it, but I think they need to work on the sensitivity so users don’t wear out their desk.
68 Comments
Orion
That’s cool!
Rahul
Oh my god , now this is so damn awesome , never expected aero shake to be something like this , incredible stuff !
Can’t wait for Windows 7 public beta
stanleyxu2005
Super!
It would be great, if only all programs on the current screen would be minimized by shaking?
Yert
NICE! Mouse gestures finally make their way into Windows. About time.
tino
Can’t believe all this! Who is responsible for all these nice ideas? Is it Julie Larson-Green or Jensen Harris or?
John Sedlak
I hope they also have a hotkey (like Windows+L or Windows+M) so that I don’t have to reach for my mouse.
JaycobC
EARTHQUAAAAAKE!
Nifty regardless!
Peter
Nice! Cool to see MS is thinking about everything with Windows 7
Nicko Darveniza
@John Sedlak
It’s called Windows+D.
lol
David Taraso
Hah, that’s awesome! God knows I’ll be playing this for a few hours now…
They can have Richard Simmons star in the introductory video. Could you imagine?
dovella
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/dovellas/bellali.png
TurboFool
Is this still Windows? I really want to know who deserves the credit for all of the cool stuff like this. Taken by itself it’s kind of cool, but not necessarily awe-inspiring. But this, plus the new taskbar, and the window moving and resizing, the ribbon, etc. is leading to a genuinely slick, and more usable, and cool OS. It looks like Microsoft’s taking Apple’s cool and easy-to-use image at heart and is finally fighting back. And let’s face it, that’s always what they’ve been good at. They make something, they get leap-frogged by their competition, and then they fight tooth and nail until they surpass it again. Heck, IE8’s almost usable again!
Seriously, though. it looks like soon I won’t have to defend my preference for Windows as much. Very exciting.
Bander Alsharfi
does not seem to work in my Windows 7 installation =(
Long Zheng
@Bander: You have to enable the advanced features using Rafael’s hack
asab
amazing feature, is that part of touch technologies or ordinary mouse gesture? (isnt that same thing?); now im sure that 7 will be best windows since 98; theres topic on neowin, screenshot contest of non existing windows roma and one guy present interesting idea merging classic taskbar with ribbon (classic means what we have now) and that reminds me windows longhorn prototype from 2003… maybe ms wants to restore forgotten and leaved ideas?
Quikboy
Another neat mouse gesture! It would also be neat if you could just hover your cursor over the Taskbar somewhere, and use your mouse wheel to flip through windows through Flip 3D or Alt-Tab.
Nicko Darveniza
@Quikboy
You can flip through the windows now with your mouse wheel. I think by default there is a Flip3D button in the quicklaunch area so you don’t have to use the key combination. I dunno what they’ll do in Windows 7.
HappyAndyK
Absolutely incredible ! I like what i see of Windows 7, to date !
Tony S
Wow, talk about GUI outside the box! I could just see how the ads for Win7 will be run: Shake, shake, shake!
Faisal Islam
Wow, great idea. i can’t imagine
Microsoft & Windows Rockz. I’m PC!
Anthony
Julie Larson-Green, Steven Sinofsky and the new Windows development team are the best things to happen to MS. Nice to see they are fighting back after Apple’s dominance (offcourse Apple is always going to be the minority)
Now I can see really see Windows 7 as a major release even if it’s version 6.1 (Vista is 6.0 – makes sense since 7 is based on the most recent Vista code; doesn’t make sense since it doesnt match the codebase number)
Jote
I really hope they will bump up the version number to 7.0, for the sake of consistency with the name. It’s just a number anyway
nadav
So finally they started stealing those ideas too? about time… compiz (fusion nowdays) has a plugin for that for more than a year now…
Rhonald
Oh please… you call this awesome? I was searching for something awesome in that. Give me a break.
aka
Thats stupid!
I dont wanna to use mouse and shake windows any time I want to minimize other windows.
Maybe any keyboard shortcut would be better?
Jote
@aka – nobody is forcing you to use this feature…
Manan
Hey Long, I see tabs of windows being shown in the taskbar, is this because it is a hacked version of the new taskbar, coz the video shown at PDC showed only icons when IE or the Motorola window was opened.
I hope you understood what I’m asking.
Long Zheng
@Manan: I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying, but it is a hacked version of the 6801 taskbar.
noel86
Resize open windows in win 7.6801 by draging (en shake) right,left or on top
http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=31178
Frank
Ah, looks like somebody posted this on slashdot or something and the 15 year olds came crawling out of the woodwork.
Manan
@Long, here is a screen shot that should make it easy for me to explain: http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/9896/61945584qj0.jpg
It shows a Vista taskbar, screen shot from Julie Larson’s Win 7 demo (Keynote) and a screenie taken from the video you posted in this article.
As you see, the Keynote screenie does not show window title but the other 2 do. I wanted to confirm, is this a new behavior of the superbar and is it a toggle on-off feature? I think Paul mentioned superbar’s emulation of the OS X dock, is this what he was referring to?
Ricardo Dawkins
@Manan: labels for the icons in the taskbar are still available. on the PDC video the settings for labels is OFF.
Sterling
Nice! I like that
Hmm… looking at the new taskbar with text labels enabled, I don’t like how there’s a lot of space in between the taskbands, although it show which icons/programs are running (icons = closed program/icons with labels = running programs).
Good stuff Long!
Sterling
Oh, I see. The space between the taskbands is/was how Jump List was going to be implemented.
Dustin Harper
That is nice. A good feature that will more than likely have an option for sensitivity. That looks like a speedy system, too. Even with those small applications, they open quickly.
AMIRZ
Cant wait to try it
GM
Long Zheng or anyone who can help
I wanted to know what will the hardware requirement for windows 7 be? I hear that it will run perfectly fine on a pc with existing Windows Vista configuration/requirement. However, I was interested in knowing the configuration requriement relating to the multi touch.
Thanks
GM
Andre F.
I hope they ditch the spaces between the buttons in the new taskbar and implement the drop down button inside the button itself. Right now it’s wasting space.
Jeff Therrien
@Andre F.
The newer builds (like the one shown at PDC) are more refined. It doesn’t have a separate button for the jumplists. And by removing the button they’ve removed some of the space.
Andre F.
Cool beans.
GRiNSER
I think this shake gesture would be very useful while dragging and dropping to put something to the desktop!
clyde roy
good stuff!!!
Anthony
agreed with grinser. i hope Win7 has spring loaded folders like in mac os x (drag and hover a file over a folder which reveals itself and etc. to folders within that level.)
Brian in WV
Another great find, Long.
On a related rumored feature, anyone have any info on whether a virtual desktops function will make it into 7? I’ve read that that’s what “Workspaces Center” will control, but no solid confirmation.
Frank
“(drag and hover a file over a folder which reveals itself and etc. to folders within that level.)”
Hasn’t that been in every version of Windows since at least Windows 95? It’s already in XP and Vista, anyway.
Tobias
Yawn!!
luiz
ja ouviram falar do compiz fusion?
Chris Mather
@ Nicko Darveniza
Windows + D Minimizes all windows, Aero shake leaves open the window you are working with. This is much different, and in my opinion, much more useful!
Manan
@Ricardo Dawkins So in other words, if I turn of the labels the windows minimized will hide behind the icon on the superbar and if it’s not, it works pretty much the way the traditional taskbar works.
MeMyself
How did you get text lables on the new superbar?
TaeX
Hmm, I’m running Windows 7 beta full, and I can’t seem to find the option to enable the labels. Care to help me anyone? =D
Cabal468
Eh…I did the same thing in the 70’s with my Etch-a-Sketch…:-D
Brad
That’s an impressive feature. Could induce RSIs, though
sparkdaniel
Anybody heard of Mac OS X.
Been able to do it for the last couple of YEARS. little thing called expose.
raf
Wow!! That’s cool… but i’m sure i’he been using something similar in my Mac for more then 3 years now…
Zim
It’s a nice idea
Cesar
No ubuntu uso e muito mais, a muito tempo -_-’
win off
iSoftech
Hope these features will be awesome when using with Multitouch PCs.
Shagbag
Initially I thought it looks nice, but now I realise it’s next to useless. Flashy GUI effects are not what makes an OS any good. I want to see meaningful changes in W7. Reduce the kernel footprint, upgrade the file system to the 21st century and, please, let’s have at least some attempt to integrate W7 with other OSes. It’s called interoperability and, no, that doesn’t mean having everything else interoperate with Windows. Finally, stop playing catch-up with everyone else and actually surprise me Redmond!
Ahmer Sultan
Wow, its pretty cool. I really need something like that under my hand.
krs
Ive had this feature for soon two years on my linux-desktop, totally useless but quite fun imo. But for the guy who wondered who to thank for this idea you can check the plugin author somewhere at compiz-fusion.org.
Emp
Is so boring!
ozgur
In Aero, open programs need to repaint themselves unless they are minimized. Even the parts of them that are covered by other windows.
This was not like this before Aero, and it is obviously a weak point of it.
This feature, is not only nice for users, but it also provides a way to beat Aero’s weakness. Solve a problem while serving the solution as a feature to end users…
Microsoft guys are way smarter than you think, guys
xyvian
Eh kinda cool. I’m hoping for multiple desktops.
Tarra
Nice.. *shake-shake”.
Wondering, if it’s usable in a maximized apps since it’s kinda rare for us to have unmaximized view.
Jan Jaap
@John Sedlak:
Windows key + Home.
Jan Jaap
@ozgur
Repainting covered windows is maybe because of the see-trough of Aero…
Jay
shake your ass, watch yourself
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