In my opinion, the new taskbar or Superbar in Windows 7 is probably the best feature in the operating system. Jumplists and lively taskbar buttons have really given developers opportunities to create excellent widgets, even better than what you can get with the Windows Gadgets platform. Some widgets we have covered in the past include a Gmail notifier, 7Stacks, StandaloneStack and Taskbar Meters. Lee Matthews from Download Squad has covered a taskbar widget called WeatherBar which puts weather information in the taskbar. WeatherBar uses tasbkar overlays, jumplists and taskbar button progress bar to show information at just a glance.  Read more...

Permalink: Apps for Windows: Get weather information in Windows 7 Taskbar using WeatherBar

Firefox has the worst UI amongst all the popular browsers. Almost all other browsers ( IE, Chrome, Safari ) have a new and better UI along with some sort of Windows 7 integration ( Aero Glass, jumplists, Aero Peek, thumbnail previews etc ), where as Firefox has none. The UI is still stuck in the Windows XP era. Mozilla has plans to change all that with Firefox 3.7 release.  Read more...

Permalink: Firefox 3.7 to get the Office Ribbon UI

The new superbar in Windows 7 has big icons like the dock which are moveable as well, but you can’t centralize them on the taskbar like OS X Docks’ icons. Well, here’s a trick that lets you do just that as shown in the above image.  Read more...

Permalink: Make your Windows 7 Superbar icons centralized like OS X’s Dock

I know I’m going to hurt a lot of people with this post, specially those wanting Windows 7 to be released ASAP. I’ve been using Windows 7 Beta daily, and couldn’t help but notice how Microsoft seem to have made critical mistakes in putting thoughts behind some simple issues. While I praise them for going with a very consistent UI through out the operating system as well as Windows Live applications, which also shows somewhat in the Office 14 alpha screenshots leaked so far, some of the little things just annoy me a lot. Because, lets face it, it’s the little things that count, and make a great impression on the user, things like Aero Snap and Jump Lists. But let me list the little things that could have been done more properly.

Explorer Title Bar

In the above screenshot, there’s a very small but obvious change from Vista to Windows 7. The title bar has no text in Windows Explorer in 7, but it is present through out all other applications. Windows Explorer doesn’t even have the little icon in the top right corner to show what it’s about. In Vista and before, it used to show the correct icon for the Pictures, Videos or whatever folder you were browsing. Why this change Microsoft? I’m sure there went a lot of thought behind this change, but sorry to say, it seems ridiculous. How’ll you feel if developers stopped putting title bar in Windows applications? I mark this change as a fail.  Read more...

Permalink: Weird Design Issues in Windows 7

Don’t you just love the stacks feature in Apple’s OS X Dock? It would have been great if Microsoft could implement such a feature in the awesome new Windows 7 superbar, but sadly, that’s something we can only dream of, since it’ll be called a rip off. But if you really really want a stack in your superbar like the one in the image below, read on.  Read more...

Permalink: Use OS X like stack in Windows 7!