Ina Fried of CNET got to spend some time with Windows 7 touchscreen and new desktop features. She has posted few videos showing the new touchscreen and the user interface. The video on the top shows the use of touchscreen in upcoming Windows 7 operating system. On the touchscreen, you can use your finger anywhere to scroll a document, you can flick your finger to scroll faster. Microsoft has added visual cues, such as making a window bounce when one has reached the end or beginning of a document. Where have we seen that… Oh the iPhone. Actually the process is so similar to the iPhone that it looks like a direct rip off. But then again, we don’t think there would have been a better way to implement scrolling on a touchscreen, so it’s a good rip off.
The other touchscreen feature that Ina showed was reverse swipe on the new taskbar, which launches “jumplist”. Jumplist is sort of mini start menu for each program that contain a series of actions like link to recent documents or controls for media player. Jumplist is almost similar to the menu you get when you right click on a Dock icon in Mac OS X. For example, if you right click on an iTunes icon when the application is running, you can Play, Shuffle, Repeat or Rate without switching to the application.
For the new Taskbar, Ina says “The new taskbar is in many ways, more akin to Mac OS X’s dock than it is to what most windows users have seen at the bottom of their screens for years.” The Taskbar is now a collection of large icons that live at the bottom of the screen. The icons represent applications chosen by the user and live there whether an application is running or not. By using the icons and not text, the clutter is removed from the taskbar and it is easier to navigate.
The second video below shows the Taskbar in action. The icons on the Taskbar can be used to switch to or launch an application, it can also be used to launch the jumplist to control an application. The third video at the bottom shows the jumplist in action and resizing of windows by dragging them to the corner or top of the screen. All three videos give quite a lot of information about the new interface changes in Windows 7. And, if you thought Windows Vista was inspired by Mac OS X wait till you see Windows 7. We are not saying that’s a bad thing, actually the interface looks really clean and user friendly.