Os x taskbar for windows 7

Ars Technica has taken an in-depth look at the history and evolution of the Taskbar, and shows just how MS arrived at the Windows 7 'Superbar. The surprising conclusion? This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted. Full Abbreviated Hidden. More Login. So, it's different Score: 3 , Interesting.

Share twitter facebook. Re:So, it's different Score: 5 , Informative. I share your sentiments about the OS X dock and the 7 taskbar, but it's still vaporware. Parent Share twitter facebook. Score: 4 , Insightful. Isn't Windows 7 coming out earlier than originally planned? I think that's pretty as non-vaporware as you can get.

Re:so, to summarize Score: 5 , Insightful. Score: 4 , Informative. Score: 4 , Interesting. It's called "Windows 1. Actually, the Xerox Star had a dock for applications, printers. Re: Score: 3 , Informative. Wendy's was first Score: 2 , Funny. Re:Wendy's was first Score: 4 , Insightful.

You would care if those three movies that were all similar if those were the only three movies that year. But when Apple copies something it's innovation. When Microsoft does it, it's child porn. Re: Score: 3 , Insightful.

It's funny because it's true. Obviously it's an evolution, but it's a big one. It's quite different actually Score: 3 , Insightful. Re: Score: 2. Re: Score: 3 , Funny. Re:Here's what Apple has copied Score: 5 , Funny.

Is your monitor really that reflective, AC? Score: 5 , Interesting. The funny thing about this was that the OSX dock concept never worked for me while windows works fine. I was a windows user for years, I'm not even sure if I started before 3. So Windows is engrained into my skull. I thought what a great time to check this out. After 1 year I insisted on going back to Windows, and Vista no-less. What really did it in for me was the work flow, I was so used to Windows that I could never really jive with the Mac GUI and especially dock.

I had lived for years off of the quick launch bar and instant document jumping via the task bar. Now likely I wasn't using OSX effectively, but I can tell you from an empirical 12 month test that clicking on a word tab at the bottom of the screen was more efficient for me than minimizing the document so that I could find it later as it went to the dock or hunting around all tiny images when using the Expose button. In addition the ugliness of having all those application 'listed' along the bottom of the screen by icon was not great either.

To me the major space on the dock should have been for very quickly finding the document of choice, and the whole Stacks concept I suppose that I came to the conclusion that I wasn't "metrosexual" enough to use a Mac. However, there was a bunch of things that Windows should be stealing from the Mac.

Re: Score: 3 , Interesting. Disappointing Score: 5 , Informative. Re:Disappointing Score: 5 , Interesting. Spaces Score: 4 , Informative. I couldn't disagree more strongly. So there's the proof! Score: 5 , Funny. It waddles. It quacks. It's a camel! KDE Score: 5 , Funny.

Fecal analysis? Score: 2 , Funny. Re: Score: 2 , Insightful. If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and it flies like a duck No way it could possibly be any kind of, you know, DUCK Windows in more environmentally friendly than Mac Score: 5 , Funny.

Windows has a recycling bin but Apple still has trash. Re:Windows in more environmentally friendly than M Score: 3 , Informative. Who wants to kill marketroids? Windows 7 'Superbar. It's not a new idea Score: 2. Super Bar Awesome Bar A product like that would sell itself. Translation Score: 5 , Insightful. Re:Translation Score: 4 , Insightful. It is similar Re:It is similar Wasn't the whole "look and feel" thing decided in Microsoft's favor, back in the 90's? Writeup could have been done better Score: 2.

Who cares? Did they copy it? Did they not? Do I care? Windows never had an "application switcher" Score: 2 , Insightful. Windows never had an "application switcher". It was always a window switcher. It just seemed like an application switcher when the processes all consistently only put up one top level window. My wishlist for the taskbar Score: 2 , Interesting.

For as long as I remember now, I've wanted a way to do the following with the Windows Taskbar: 1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open 2. Send windows to background taskbars desktops , so I could be using different sets of apps at once Hopefully they could add some minor usability features like this; I feel like I'm regularly working against the taskbar to get things done. Re:My wishlist for the taskbar Score: 4 , Interesting. Taskbar was kinda like this long before Dock..

The windows taskbar has long had the quicklaunch bar, as well as the ability to add other folders as toolbars pointing to whatever folder. So it has been both a application launcher you could set large icons too and a window manager for a long time.

This goes way back. Now it seems the application launcher areas of the taskbar are less limited. Considering this, the changes in Windows 7 are only a very small step in the direction of the OSX Dock. Slight exaggeration Score: 4 , Informative. Oh come on, now Score: 5 , Insightful. The real difference is that Score: 5 , Insightful. Document-centric UIs, on the other hand, don't scale well, and that has led both the Windows OS and its applications to try to fake it one way or another, by grouping task bar icons, staying alive in the sys-tray, etc.

Re: Score: 2 , Informative. Re:The real difference is that Score: 5 , Funny. If you type faster than that, you get a warning on license violation. Three strikes and your keyboard bricks until you call Microsoft and upgrade. Comment removed based on user account deletion. Re:The real difference is that Score: 5 , Insightful.

This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from. It does at least make for a more compact menu than that huge thing we see in recent MSOffice versions, which has obvious advantages if you are using a laptop. Look carefully at "Application" But I digress Re:Look carefully at "Application" Maybe that's the way you think, but its not the way I think. I usually think "It's time for some tunes" not even caring which one just start playing randomly from all of my music , "What's new on ", "I need to find ", "It's time write some code for project ".

The applications are just the means to those ends. Personally I don't want document centric, application centric, or window centric. I want task and result centric. By result centric I mean I get the result of music being played, as that doesn't fall into a the category of at task for me, since I'm not the one playing the music. It is just something I want the computer to start doing and stop again later when I don't want it any more. To bad for me though, as that's now any of the OSes do it at present.

OS wars aren't steeped in "subtle" differences! Actually, both of you hit two heads of the same nail. Re: Score: 3. If you can find an inte. Re:The real difference is that Score: 5 , Interesting. This ArsTechnica article is kind of dumb Score: 3 , Informative. Re:Only the most facile Re:Astroturfing Score: 5 , Insightful. By 'astroturfing', do you mean 'having a differing opinion to the groupthink'?

Can you honestly think of a community of individuals save, say, BoycottNovell that are less likely to either: a Switch to Windows, or b Do anything at all on the whim of a commenter? Not so much. Re:Astroturfing Score: 5 , Interesting. There are two basic options for people here, as it pertains to the astroturfing claim: 1. People use Windows, or 2. People use something else. In that sense I have to agree with him. Update: Numerous readers point out that you've always been able to dock folders to the Windows taskbar by right-clicking on the taskbar and choosing New Toolbar from the Toolbars menu.

This application simply does it with eye-candy effects instead of a plain menu. The A. About Lifehacker Advisor Lifehacker Store. So, for example, in this screenshot we see TextEdit is running with a single document window open.

Closing that document doesn't close TextEdit; it's still running, just without any windows that is, documents open. The Mac's window-per-document model naturally leads all Mac software to be able to load and display multiple documents simultaneously; to have multiple documents, just create multiple windows. The situation isn't so clear-cut on Windows. Because each window represents an entire application, what should an application do if the user wants to load two documents simultaneously?

The lack of a single good answer means that Windows applications exhibit a variety of behaviors. The simplest policy is that used by Notepad; Notepad simply can't open multiple documents, and so to get multiple documents you just run multiple copies of the application.

While this works reasonably well for small, lightweight applications like Notepad, it's not so satisfactory for larger applications, and as a result we see a variety of other behaviors in other Windows programs. You must login or create an account to comment.