Mastering Window Management with Windows 7 Tricks

And don't worry: All the keyboard shortcuts and other tricks you've used in previous versions of Windows continue to work the same way in Windows 7.

1. Resizing and Moving Windows

New mouse gestures in Windows make it easy to work with certain windows without being distracted by the clutter of others:

• Aero Snap has three functions. The first one makes it easy to maximize a window or restore it to its previous size and position. Simply drag the title bar to the top of the screen to maximize it, or drag the title bar away from the top edge to restore it. (Although Windows has long offered comparable capability with the Maximize and Restore buttons in the title bar, this new gesture offers a much bigger target. This feature also makes it possible to move a maximized window from one screen to another on a multimonitor system.)

  The second Aero Snap function makes it easy to split the screen space between two windows for easy side-by-side editing or comparisons: drag a window title bar to the left edge of the screen, and it snaps to fill the left half of the screen. (Note that the window resizes when the mouse pointer hits the edge of the screen. So to use this feature with minimal mouse movement, start your drag action by pointing at the title bar near the edge you're going to snap to.) Drag a title bar to the right edge to fill the right half of the screen. Begin dragging a window that has been resized this way away from the edge of the screen, and it returns to its previous size and position.

  The third function is useful if you want full-height side-by-side windows but you don't want them to fill exactly half the screen width. It's also good for obtaining maximum window height without making text lines too long to read, especially on wide-screen monitors. Drag the top window border (not the title bar) to the top edge of the screen, or drag the bottom border to the bottom edge of the screen. With either action, when you reach the edge the window snaps to full height, without changing its width. When you drag the border away from the window edge, the opposite border snaps to its previous position.

• Aero Shake minimizes all windows except the one you want to use. To do that, point to the window's title bar, hold down the mouse button, and quickly move it back and forth a few times. Suddenly, all windows except that one retreat to the taskbar. This one takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it you'll probably use it often. It requires only three "shakes"—a smooth left, right, left motion is best—not maniacal shaking.

Note:

Although the names of these features include the word Aero,unlike the Aero Peek feature, you do not need to have Aero enabled to use these mouse gestures. Without Aero, you lose some of the associated visual effects, but the outcome is the same.

Windows 7 includes keyboard shortcuts that correspond with the preceding mouse gestures. These are shown in Table 1.

The new taskbar in Windows 7 also uses a new trick to expose the traditional window menu: hold the Shift key as you right-click a taskbar button. For a button that represents a single window, the menu includes commands to Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, and Close the window. Shift+right-clicking a grouped taskbar button displays commands to arrange, restore, minimize, or close all windows in the group.

^[1] Pressing this key repeatedly cycles through the left, right, and restored positions. If you have more than one monitor, it cycles these positions on each monitor in turn.

^[2] Pressing this key repeatedly cycles through the left, right, and restored positions. If you have more than one monitor, it cycles these positions on each monitor in turn.