Taskbar Magic

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Windows 7 introduced “Superbar” which is like a Taskbar on steroids. What strikes you immediately is that Taskbar buttons are the right size for touch operations, which of course is built into Windows 7. However, there are many cool features like Jumplists, Aero Peek, Combining of Taskbar buttons and desktop peek. I am sure if you are using Windows 7, you must have discovered this by now so I am not going to talk about it. I am going to talk about certain apps which are taking advantage of the new Taskbar capabilities. In TechED 2010 I presented a session on WindowsAPICodePack and how to program the Taskbar button using C++/COM or .NET code but don't worry, I am not going to show programming code here . We are beginning to see new apps using the Taskbar very innovatively. Lets look at some of these applications.

Taskbar Meters

Traditionally we have had applications which show us system information in system tray (Task Manager) and Desktop (Sidebar) but this cool little utility called Taskbar Meters put it right on the Taskbar. It actually uses a feature meant for showing progress bar on the Taskbar button. You must have seen this in Windows 7 when you run Setup, the progress is indicated on the Taskbar itself so that you can minimize the window and yet keep getting visual feedback of the progress. Well, this utility sets the progress value to current CPU, RAM and Disk utilization. Real Neat.

Here is a screenshot of all 3 meters

If it takes too much space on your Taskbar, use Combine option to make them more like thumbnails or run only the one you want to keep an eye on (e.g. CPU).

Gmail Notifier Plus

Gmail Notifier Plus is another cool application which act as a notifier from the Taskbar itself. As shown in the image, the Taskbar button shows the Gmail icon with unread count and right click bring up the “JumpList”. It makes very innovative use of JumpList by providing a set of user actions like “Compose mail”, “Go to your inbox”, “Check for new mail” and “Change settings”. But along with it, it also provides a list of unread mail in the Jumplist itself. The pin feature doesn't work so you cannot Pin a mail to the list and I don't know if it will make sense to pin a mail to jumplist.

When you install this app, it starts off with a configuration window which allows you to add multiple Gmail IDs (including Google App domains id). It uses a pull mechanism instead of push, so you have to specify the frequency for checking for new mails. The interface is simple and clean.

But what takes the cake is the Aero Peek feature of this app. The preview window displays first few lines of your mail with an icon to open the mail in your default browser to read.  and also provide back and next button to view your unread mail.

All in all its a cool utility if you use Gmail.

Taskbar Stacks

Mac OSX introduced a concept of stack on its dock which is like a “spring up” list of apps, recently opened doc etc. Windows developers were not far behind in implementing this feature on Windows 7. There are 2 stacks which provide similar functionality – 7Stacks and Standalone Stack.

While both are equally good, I found the UI of 7stacks a bit more pleasing.

7Stacks

Windows 7 allows you to pin programs on your Taskbar thereby merging erstwhile Quicklaunch features into Taskbar. However, if you use a lot of applications, your Taskbar can fill up very quickly with these pinned programs. I regularly use different browsers to test web sites and therefore have at least 6 browsers in my list. If I pin all of them (apart from MS office apps), my Taskbar will be half full (or half empty). 7Stacks allows me to take any folder and convert it into a popup stack (as shown in the image), there by occupying only one button space on the Taskbar but allowing me to quickly access a group of applications with 2-clicks. Once launched, these apps behave normally and appear on the Taskbar.

When you install 7stacks, it creates a desktop shortcut for creating a stack. All you need is a folder which will be made into a pop up stack and icon to represent the stack on the Taskbar.

As you can see in the image above, you can select virtually any folder and convert it into a stack. It gives you a quick access button SF for Standard Folders like My Documents, My Videos but also like Control Panel, Start Menu, Program Files etc. Once you choose a folder, specify an icon to represent it, choose the stack style (Vertical, Grid or Menu).

Once you click on “Create Shortcut on Desktop”, it will generate you stack shortcut, simply drag and drop it on the Taskbar and you are done.

The above image shows a stack in Grid layout with an option to explore the folder in regular Windows Explorer.

Check out Standalone Stack and decide which of these two (or both) you want to use.

Conclusions

Taskbar has some great features and while applications like these are making innovative use of those features, we are likely to see many more developers take advantage of Taskbar in future.

Have you come across such utilities which make innovative use of Taskbar? I would love to know about it, so drop me a comment.

Happy Tasking

Growl for Windows

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Every OSX user eventually comes across Growl as either it gets downloaded along with some app or stumbles upon documentation which talks about Growl. In fact, some OSX users tend to believe that it ships with OSX itself. I have been using Growl since my MacMini days and when I got my 17” MacBook Pro, it was one of the first apps that I downloaded on my OSX partition.

What is Growl?

In very simple terms, Growl is centralized notification system which receives notifications from apps and displays them in a consistent, configurable manner so that every app does not have to build its own notification mechanism. You can use Growl to decide which notifications to show, how to show them and what action to take if the user interact with these notifications.

Growl for Windows

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Growl for Windows which neatly mimics the functionality and features of Growl for Mac. While OS X version has support of many applications, Windows apps do not come with built-in support for Growl yet.

 

Apps and Displays

Most applications build their own notification systems from scratch. Think of Live Messenger popup toaster, Outlook’s new mail alert, System alert for low battery and so on. Then there are web based apps like Gmail, Facebook etc. which have their own notifications which are either delivered when you go online on the site or via email. Some may even have custom built alert apps just to notify you. Growl can unify all these and provide a consistent user experience.

Apps can be applications which have built in support for Growl or a helper app in from of a plugin, extension or add-on which detects changes and relays the notification to Growl. The list of such apps is increasing steadily and cover a range from web based apps like Gmail, Twitter, Facebook to desktop apps like Outlook, Skype, Visual Studio to even hardware automation like ECS & ZWave automation systems.

Displays are notification UI and notification styles which can be configured and customized. Display is a misnomer because apart from the typical notification toaster window and sound, you can even configure it to send SMS, email, post to twitter account or run an application.

Forwarding and Subscriptions

Imagine that you are an administrator managing a dozen of systems in an office. Instead of checking and verifying  every system periodically for regular maintenance issue, you install Growl on each one of them and forward their notifications to your administrative system. So if someone has low disk issue, you can remotely run disk cleaner.

In addition to forwarding, you can subscribe to notification from other system including web site to be informed of events occurring on those systems.

Phones, SMS and Email

Growl supports forwarding notifications to iPhone thru plugins in Prowl, Howl and you can also forward notifications to an email which makes it ideal for being able to keep track of events while on the move. If you can also send notifications to your system thru email and other means, coupled with triggers, you can launch commands and control your system remotely.

Conclusion

Growl is a nice move in the direction of unifying notifications on Windows on the lines of Growl of Mac and we should soon see a lot more native support built into applications in future. Meanwhile try and get a helper application for the popular applications and website and enjoy!

Happy Growling

Cool Switcher

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The easiest way to switch between running apps on Windows is ALT-TAB. Windows XP and earlier has a small popup window which display just the icons of running application. It displayed the title of the running app only when  you  “cycle” thru them to figure out which one you wanted to switch to.

Windows Switcher 

Vista and Windows 7 made it easier with switch window which shows a thumbnail preview (which looks a lot like OSX switch except that OSX has cool feature of bring it up with 4 fingers swipe sideways ).

 

As shown in the screen shot, ALT-TAB does show thumbnail previews but the are too small and if there are multiple instances of an application running, it still doesn't help you in differentiating them until you alt-tab to them and read the description.

I have been using large resolution displays like 1900x1200, which tends to make the icons smaller unless you change the DPI. I understand that switcher window is not a regular app but why does the window have to be so small?

VistaSwitcher

Welcome to VistaSwitcher. Don’t go by the name, it works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It replaces the ALT-TAB key so you can continue to use your finger memory to switch apps.

The advantage of VistaSwitcher are:

1. Large Window – Clear visibility
2. Full window preview – You can actually read the contents
3. App titles – You can see without cycling thru
4. Numbered List – quick selection by number

It also adds another cool feature with ATL-` which allows you to switch between multiple instance of the currently selected app. Example, if you have multiple instance of IE or Word open and you want to switch to another, no need to use ALT-TAB and wade thru other apps, just press ALT-` (This one also come from OSX Cmd-` feature).

The above screen shot shows ONLY instance of IE and not the other running apps to quickly switch to another IE window.

Wait.. there is more

You can use mouse instead of keyboard to bring up the switcher.. but you need to enable it from preferences.. Right Click + Wheel Scroll.

Mouse can also be used to select apps from the switch window and it even allows right click to take actions on the running apps For example, you could select a set of apps and tile, cascade and even end task them.

Conclusion

VistaSwitcher is a free app which adds a lot of features to ALT-TAB switching and provides large, crisp and readable preview to make switching between tasks easier.

Happy Switching

Windows’ built in magnifier tool

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As I am growing old, the ability to read fonts on 1900x1200 resolution screen is becoming a bit difficult. I have a 17” MacBook Pro with OSX SnowLeopard and I had quickly discovered that CTRL-SCROLL zooms the screen and that too live, meaning that its not just a screen shot but magnified state where I can continue to click and type. It became a regular habit when filling forms on the browser or even editing. The transition is so smooth that you don't even feel any delay when going into zoomed mode. I have been using Firefox (largely due to showcase extension) rather than Safari and am also used to zoom for within the browser window using Command + and Command – in OSX (Command is the “Apple” key but mostly work like counterpart to CTRL key of Windows). When Windows 7 RC arrived, I excitedly installed it in my boot camp partition and was very happy with the improvements it had over Vista. I installed Firefox and started using it and in no time as part of habit, I hit the Command + key to zoom inside the browser. Wow! The browser didn't zoom but the entire desktop zoomed. Wow! Neat.

Windows 7 not only matched what OSX provides but actually surpasses OSX in terms of screen magnification. Lets discover the magnification features in Windows 7 and how to use them efficiently in our day to day work and during presentations.

Activating the Zoom

Pressing Windows and + key brings up the magnifier panel and zooms the entire screen to the last zoomed state. The Panel contains zoom out and zoom in buttons but you can continue to use Win + and Win to continue your zoom in and out.

Full screen zoom is a live zoom and not a snapshot, which means you can continue to work with windows, clicking things and type without having to switch the zoom off. This may be convenient in a situation when you are presenting to an audience in a large hall and want to focus on a particular part of the slide or screen. You can also use it while working when the fonts or images are two small and you want a clearer image.

Docking the old style

Before Windows 7 we did have zoom but it was always docked as a panel where you could see the zoomed image as you mouse moved on the screen. This option still exists and can be activated.

As you can see, there is a docked magnifier at the top, above the Opera window and you can see Opera title bar, menu button and address bar in magnified state. The Dock follows your mouse pointer and you show you the area under selection magnified..

How much dock to dock?

Magnifier dock starts off with a standard height but you are not limited to the standard size and you can resize the dock to a much larger size, covering almost the entire desktop (do this when you are going blind ). Take a look at the picture below.. the magnifier dock covers almost half the height of the desktop. Remember, you need to click at the bottom edge of the magnifier and drag it downwards. It has a small bug that it shows you a 4-headed “move” pointer and NOT the 2-headed “size” pointer which can be confusing as you can land up undocking it by “move”.

Undock the dock

Some people may not like the entire top section of their screen to be blocked by a magnifier, so a better way would be to “undock” the magnifier into a smaller window and keep it afloat on the screen as you work.

 

Wait.. there is more…

Lens mode is excellent during presentations as it shows you a lens like view which follows your mouse pointer magnifying the area around it. I find it useful when delivering presentations as it not only magnifies the code I want to show but also forces the audience to focus on what I am showing rather than getting distracted by rest of the screen. The lens is configurable in terms of size and you specify the height and width of the lens using SHIFT-ALT .. LEFT/RIGHT to adjust width and UP/DOWN to adjust height.  You can also move the lens using keyboard shortcuts of CTRL-ALT-Arrows. The image below shows a section of the slide being magnified, focussing the attention of the audience on that section.

Getting back to Full screen zoom and getting perspective

Having experimented with Dock (CTRL-ALT-D) and Lens (CTRL-ALT-L), lets get back to full screen.

In this mode, as we started, the entire screen is in a “live” zoom state. While this maybe preferred by some, it can also get a little disorienting as to where we are on the screen. To get a perspective, press CTRL-ALT-SPACE and momentarily the screen will unzoom highlighting the area which is under zoom mode and then quickly return to zoom mode.

 

To end it all

Some people struggle to end the zoom as the key combination is not well documented or made obvious.It can be frustrating in middle of a presentation to have started Len mode zoom but struggling to return back to normal mode. If you are in full screen zoom mode, just keep pressing Win – until it restore to normal, unfortunately, that doesn't work in Lens or Dock mode. In fact Win+ and Win – control the level of zoom in all modes. To get the Dock or Lens mode completely off, just press the following..

Happy Zooming

How to delay Startup apps and influence performance

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Couple of years ago Raj Chaudhuri and I were talking about how it takes a long time for Windows XP to start up due to a lot of applications installing themselves into the Startup folder and Run registry. It seemed ALL applications back then wanted to run with windows Startup and live forever in your system tray. While most applications would politely ask if you wanted to install them in Startup, some sneaked in without asking and I am not talking about the virus variety here. Some others are even sneakier.. they install themselves not in Startup or Run registry but in Windows Task Schedule (e.g. Google Updater).

Back then, I used to have a folder on my desktop containing shortcuts of applications which I wanted to Startup but not all together attempting that at boot time. So after a quick boot and when Windows was usable and responsive, I would go to the folder and start them up one by one in between my current work. This was obviously tedious and sometime I would get too engrossed in my work and forget completely about. The Solution?

WinPatrol

WinPatrol is a small little utility which basically watches over your Startup folder, run registry, services and pops up a warning whenever any application tries to add itself to these. It even fights with those applications which on every run try to re-establish themselves into the registry by blocking every attempt. While this action can keep you safe from virus and unwanted program, you still land up adding quite a few application in your start up which delays your boot process.

Delayed Startup 

Winpatrol has an option of Delayed Startup, whereby WinPatrol adds itself into Startup registry and then allows you to mark other Startup program as “delayed”. You can simply select a Startup app in WinPatrol window and select “Move to delayed Startup program list”. This by itself may not solve the problem but merely postpone it as these apps would again try and Startup together causing slowdown while you are working. So in addition to delaying the program, Winpatrol also allows you to specify the delay period. which can range from seconds to hours (Who really wants Java Updater to run the very second I boot up? I have it starting after an hour). So you can stagger your Startups with a few minutes delay between them, prioritizing  apps based on how soon you would start using them (Open Outlook after 5 minutes of boot, Vuze after 10 minutes..). In fact, if you think about it, you may now want to add more applications to your start up and pop them up after few minutes or even hours like a reminder (Windows Live Writer pops up after 2 hours as a reminder to blog ).

After installing WinPatrol, launch it from system tray and select the “Startup Programs”” tab. This lists all the program listed in the registry, Startup folders, etc.

Now, right select an entry to bring up the context menu showing you a host of options. One of these options is “Move to Delayed Startup Program List”.

Once the program has been moved to delayed list, switch over the that tab and you will see a list of delayed apps with their deferred times.

Select an app and click on “Delay Option” button to specify the delay before launching this app. You can have a maximum of 60 minutes and 50 seconds of delay added.

Similarly, go ahead and defer each app with a different delay and your boot process with become snappy as all apps wont try to Startup at the same time.

There are other solutions available in market like Soluto (Wow UX), Startup Delayer etc., but they are too focussed only only delaying Startup, whereas WinPatrol doubles up as a sentry against applications trying to install Startup registry entries, services and scheduled tasks.

Happy Delaying!