It’s been a long time since I’ve written one of these articles and in the interim Windows 7 has been launched a much applauded by the press and public. I too have warmly received Windows 7, mostly because I was using either the irritating and sluggish Vista, or the insecure XP before.
But now that we’re about a month in I believe it’s time for the Windows 7 bashing to continue if we’ve got any hope of getting the Windows 8 we all need and deserve.
The problem with Windows 7 is that, in many areas, it was rushed. Microsoft did not take a holistic approach to developing the operating system, it’s features and it’s interface.
I’ve spoken before about Libraries being an excellent example of this. You can add folders to libraries, even on Homegroup connected PCs, but why can’t you filter those folder by content type, or have a library of all your Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) files? This is a very annoying omission and one that makes the otherwise excellent Libraries feature much less useful than Microsoft would like it to be.
Another example I’ve spoken about is search. The search facility in Windows 7 is awful. Just compare this to the search facility we first saw in Windows XP, with helpful drop-downs and context sensitive search. You can’t search by multiple parameters at all in Windows 7, and the search commands themselves are so complex that even the most hardened Windows 7 user will only ever use a small fraction of them because you need to carry a paper list around with you.
But there’s one bug bear that’s recently been truly annoying me and that’s the context menus when you click on a file.
What is missing in this menu? With Windows 7 Microsoft have introduced the new ‘superbar’ onto which you can pin programs for easy launch and so they’re easier to find. Now let’s set aside for a moment that friends have all said to me that A) You could do this in XP and Vista with the quick launch area anyway and B) That this is an acceptance on Microsoft’s part that the Start Menu is no longer an acceptable way to find and use programs.
My problem is you you can right click on a program once you find it in the Start Menu and pin it to the taskbar, but you ought by the same logic be able to right click on a document and do the same.
This should, if the functionality were included, automatically pin the document to the jumplist for the program on your taskbar and, if the program is not already pinned to your taskbar, pin it there for you.
It’s an excellent example, if any more were needed, that Microsoft should have spent more time developing their new interface and functionality ideas. We can only hope they take these ideas on board and spend a bit of time getting them right for the launch of Windows 8 in 2012.
