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by sankara 5893 days ago
W7 provides a rough equivalent of a static ordering by virtue of its taskbar. My browser and IDE are pinned at positions 1 and 2 and I could typically reach them "always" with Win+1 and Win+2.I'm yet to take full advantage of that though. I use alt+tab, release, alt+tab, alt+tab, release, alt+tab most of the times as well.
2 comments
cturner 5893 days ago
As far as I can tell, W7 doesn't have a learnable internal logic.

I've started a new job recently where I got W7 (having never used Vista) and have played with it quite a bit. Just when I'd think I had it worked out, I'd open up a larger volume of windows and it would change behaviour.

On top of that there are prominent applications which have never played nice - outlook (and anything that minimises to the status bar - behaves inconsistently), and excel (which has never played nice).

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sankara 5893 days ago
I disabled minimise to status bar in outlook as soon as I moved to W7. Trust me you won't miss it. Win+<num> should work with Vista too (in quick access bar) if I'm not wrong.

From what I learn from people at MS, Office team follow their own UI conventions and they dictate Windows not the other way round. So it would always be office does something and windows follows.

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cturner 5893 days ago 

    I disabled minimise to status bar in outlook as soon
    as I moved to W7
I've had a google in search of this and not turned up anything. Playing with the view of things in the systems tray doesn't fix the problem of it staying near the top of your MRU list, against windows convention. How do you do it?

Win+num swaps by application, but not by windows.

Win+tab has a horrible transition effect that I don't seem to be able to turn off without destroying the feature altogether.

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sankara 5893 days ago
Right click on Outlook status bar icon and uncheck "Hide When Minimized".

It's just that it provides a mix of MRU and static ordering. The goal for me typically is to move to a frequently used app e.g., my IDE/Browser asap. Win+<num> gets hardwired and I don't have to remember if my fav app is third/fifth from my current window/app.

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cturner 5892 days ago 

    Right click on Outlook status bar icon and uncheck "Hide When Minimized".
OK, now I see what you meant when you said, 'Trust me you won't miss it.'. Yeah, I can see your point but I do miss it, but it's still an improvement :)

* What that in original state (i.e. Show when minimized) and I minimise, the app stays at the top of the MRU stack.

* When that is on, and I minimise, the app disappears out of my alt+tab order altogether.

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oliverkofoed 5893 days ago
That's a great tip, that i'm going to start using.

Thanks.

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