One neat little feature of Windows 7: Aero Shake. Simply do a back and forth whip of the mouse and all background windows instantly become minimized. Let's see this paired up with a laptop accelerometer for some Etch-A-Sketch style desktop cleaning, Microsoft.
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geez - that doesn't seem neat to me. I do those kind of jittery things while I'm painfully trying to parse the manly poorly designed and laid out web pages I look at daily. I also do that all the time working with Photoshop and After Effects when it seems the system might be hung just to make sure, at least the mouse buffer is still actively working.
This just seems like yet another thing I'll have to turn off and constantly wonder why they didn't use the people that developed this feature to make the OS perform faster or improve stability...
WinKey+D does a fine job too. Plus, you can already do it.
So... this is basically like the hot corners in expose? Except instead of just getting the windows out the way it clutters up the task bar? That's the way it seems to me anyway, and follows the tradition of Microsoft being behind the times and then doing a worse job of it when they do catch up.
This would be pure hell for anyone using Photoshop.
Gobo:
Wouldn't be bad in photoshop as you have to grab a window by it's border to do the shake trick.
Don't know how useful this will be though - can't see me doing this on a trackpad or nubbin...
"Aero Shake" sounds like an Enemy Skill from Final Fantasy VII.
What's the matter - is "Hide Others" patented?
Great. Now in addition to avoiding hitting the Insert key on my cramped laptop all the time, I have to be careful about how quickly I sweep the mouse across the screen.
want from windows 7: simple, effective, logical OS
do not want from windows 7: stupid bloatware sucking up resources
So, in other words, Microsoft has finally discovered mouse gestures?
"Kif, clear my schedule."
So... that handy little 'Show Desktop' icon in the toolbar isn't effective enough? I'm failing to see how grabbing a window border and shaking it is faster than hitting that, or alt-tabbing to the desktop.
I thought the region specific window sizing/splitting for dragging windows to various corners/sides of the desktop was cool and a good idea, I hope this shake thing is just some resource free extension of that.
Terrific. More god damn "Guess What I Mean" gesture interfaces, so seemingly innocent mouse produce startling major window rearrangement.
Mouse gestures and pretty GUI does not a good OS make.
It's fascinating to me the negativity that immediately surrounds any announcement from Microsoft on the web. Personally, I would find this feature immensely useful, as I often have 10-15 windows open at a time.
Two points that seem to have been missed in the comments above: You have to grab the window border to activate the gesture, and it differs from WinKey-D or the Show Desktop button in that it leaves the currently active window open.
Wow, there sure is a lot of knee-jerk hate in here. Don't knock it till you try it.
That's kinda nice. One thing everyone who is SO FRIGHTENED of minimizing everything due to their caffeine jitters should remember - you can probably configure or even turn off this little option.
There are a hundred neat tricks just like this you can do with Linux. You don't blog about them, though, because Linux being awesome isn't newsworthy. Windows being *slightly* more modern is, though.
Ah, thanks Decultured, that's helpful to know. I was picturing a riot of windows zooming in and out as I airbrush a shadow.
That interface looks remarkably like KDE 4. Also: the fancy GUI manipulation reminds me of certain options in Compiz.
'Cept, you know, Ubuntu's free and doesn't hand content nazis the means to reinforce and introduce DRM.
"Gesture" based features all pretty much suck, from the points of view of a UI designer, a support technician, and a typical user. What is it about the "shake" that correlates to the real world? (Nothing.) Does the behavior change if I shake up and down, or on a diagonal? How do I tell the OS what level of "shakiness" should trigger an event? How do I undo a "shake"? How does this work with multiple virtual desktops?
And as others have pointed out, what does this enable that existing options don't?
Hello? This is great: it allows you to hide all windows EXCEPT the one that you're holding.
On a Mac, the only way to do this that I know of is to go down to the Dock, right click on the application icon, hold down Option, and select Hide Others.
Four steps, a larger mouse distance, and a button on the keyboard. How on Earth is that better???
It's also clear that half the people didn't even watch the video before posting: "This would be pure hell for anyone using Photoshop."; "I have to be careful about how quickly I sweep the mouse across the screen. "
@21, Fully understanding that this is four days after the fact, the same thing is easily accomplished by the keyboard alone: Cmd-Opt-H.
Alright, I LOVE Linux, however, I LOVE games, so I have been looking for a decent 64 bit windows for a while, and I have to say that Windows 7 right now pretty much fills that bill. I really like it, for a Windows platform. The only thing right now I HATE about it is this annoying feature (Aero Shake). I can't find any settings for it, or a way to turn it off atm. And, it DOES fire off at times I don't want it to, and IT DOES seem to not fire off sometimes if I do want it to. If I could just turn this one feature off I would be a happy chappy.