Windows 7 demo: Window management Video

Windows 7 demo: Window management Video Transcript

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>> Ed: I'm Ed Bock for ZD Net. And today I want to show you a cool new set of gestures and short cuts you can use in Windows 7 to move, resize and arrange Windows more intelligently. You're probably used to using maximize and minimize buttons in the top right corner of a window. But once you learn the new way to maximize and restore a window, you'll never touch those buttons again. Click the title bar, drag it to the top of the screen, and snap it into position. Drag it down and away to restore the window to its previous size and position. By the way, that should give you a pretty good idea of why this feature is called Arrow Snap. On really big, wide screen monitors, it doesn't make sense to maximize some windows. Get your web browser or your Word document to the right width, then drag the top or bottom of the window up to fill the screen vertically without changing the horizontal. One of my favorite Arrow Snap tricks is this one where you can arrange a window so it occupies exactly half the screen. Just grab the title bar and move it to the side of the monitor until the mouse pointer hits the edge. Release the mouse button and you're done. Check out the animation effects as you move a window to a hot spot at the edge of the screen. It's subtle, almost subconscious, but it gives you great feedback about when to release the mouse button. Everything I've shown you so far has involved the mouse. But you can also use keyboard shortcuts for these Arrow Snap actions. Hold down the Windows logo key and use the left and right arrow keys to snap from side to side. Use the Windows key plus the up and down arrows to maximize, restore and minimize a window. The only tricky keyboard shortcut is the one you use to vertically expand a window. For that, hold down the Windows logo key, plus shift, plus the up arrow. There's one common situation where I use these techniques every day. And that's for copying files between folders. I have some files on a USB flash drive that I want to copy to my local hard drive. By arranging the two windows side by side, I can do the job quickly, just dragging the files out of one window and dropping them in the other. And for the grand finale there's Arrow Shake. Want to minimize every window but the one you're working with? Just click the title bar and move it from side to side quickly at least three times. If you did it by accident, just repeat the gesture to put things back the way they were. In the next video I'll show you how some new features in Windows 7 can help you multitask more effectively. For ZD Net, I'm Ed Bock. ^M00:02:48 [ Background noise ]