A Closer Look at Windows 7's Aero Peek Feature [Windows 7 Screencast]

[Field Nurse]

Yesterday you saw a fuzzy video demonstration of Aero Peek, one of the new features coming in Windows 7. Peek supercharges Windows' taskbar thumbnail previews, and lets you view, close, and switch between multiple windows by just hovering over the taskbar thumbnail, as well as pin programs to the taskbar permanently. Here's a firsthand screencast of what this looks like in action on your desktop.
Notice that when an application has more than one window open (window, not tab), hovering over the app window group in the taskbar displays a preview of those multiple windows. Hit the up arrow next to any of the large taskbar icons to "Pin this program to Taskbar," or leave it there indefinitely. The Internet Explorer menu even displays your browsing history right inside of it. Hit the play button to see what this looks like.

The PDC release of the Windows 7 Preview doesn't have Peek enabled by default—and after unlocking it, it's still not the full feature set that yesterday's video showed off. However, even the Preview release's crippled version is still way more useful than Vista's preview-only taskbar thumbnails, and certainly goes a lot longer ways towards windows management from the taskbar than Mac OS X Leopard offers from the Dock. Thanks, Asian Angel!

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