Windows 7 Snap, Shake and Peek
It might sound like a cereal commercial, but a set of features in the Windows 7 Aero interface can make the user experience better – not to mention the “cool” factor.
Snap
Aero Snap lets you resize windows just by dragging them to the edges of your monitor(s). If you have a single monitor, you can line up two windows side by side (for example, two Word documents or two web browser windows) by dragging one to the right edge of the screen and the other to the left edge. Each will automatically resize to fill its half of the screen. This is useful for “comparison shopping.” Positioning windows this way manually takes a bit of dexterity.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite as well with an extended desktop on multiple monitors. In this case, Windows sees the entire span of monitors as one big one for the purpose of finding the edges. However, if you drag a window to the far right or left edge of your array of monitors, it will still resize to fill half of that screen only. When you drag the window away from the edge, its former position and size will be restored.
Here’s another bit of coolness. If you have a small window in the middle of the screen and you resize it to touch the top edge of the screen, it will automatically also expand vertically downward to touch the bottom edge. This makes it easy to “vertically maximize” a web page or document to make it easier to read, without taking up a lot of unnecessary horizontal real estate.
You can maximize a window completely by dragging it to the top edge of any monitor. It will maximize to fill that monitor only. Of course, we’ve always been able to maximize a window by clicking the Maximize button, but you may find that dragging is an easier and more natural way to maximize windows. This is especially true when you want to move a maximized window from one monitor to another. Instead of restoring, moving to the other monitor and clicking the Maximize button, just grab it and move it to the top of the other monitor’s screen, all in one motion. On the other hand, you may find yourself maximizing windows you didn’t intend to resize until you get used to this feature.
You’ll notice that when you drag a window to the side or top, it doesn’t instantly snap or maximize. Instead, as long as you’re still holding the mouse button down, you see a transparent preview of the size and position that the window will snap to. If you didn’t intend to maximize, for example, you can still bring the window away from the edge and it won’t happen. It doesn’t snap into its new place until you release the mouse button.
If you like this feature but you haven’t yet made the switch to Windows 7, there is a free (beta) program you can download to give you the same effect in Windows XP and Vista.
Oh, and if you’re a keyboard fan, you can also snap windows in place using keyboard shortcuts. To snap the current active window to the left side of the screen, press the Windows key and the right or left arrow key. With these keyboard shortcuts, you can snap a window to the “inner” edge of a multi-monitor array. But if you want to snap it to the edge of the other monitor, press Shift along with the Windows key and arrow key.
Shake
The second new Aero feature is called Shake. You can already make all your windows minimize by clicking the Show Desktop icon in the system tray or clicking on the small rectangle at the very rightmost of the taskbar (or the bottom, if you arrange your taskbar vertically as I do). But what if you want to minimize all windows except one? Then you just shake it.
That is, you grab the window by the title bar and move it back and forth quickly. It may take a little practice to get the hang of it but when you do, it becomes very natural. Shaking the window makes all the rest minimize to the taskbar. Shake it again, and the other windows come back to their previous positions.
As with Snap, there’s a download to let you do the same thing in XP/Vista.
Peek
Aero Peek is arguably the most useful of the new interface features. In Vista, we had taskbar thumbnails, but they were small and not all that useful. Aero Peek in Windows 7 turns these thumbnails into real preview panes, where you can control the windows they represent right from the thumbnail. You can view, close or switch between windows, and if an application has more than one window open, you get a preview of each one.
Adding a bit of confusion, “Peek” is also used to refer to that little rectangle at the right or bottom of the taskbar that I referenced earlier, the one that you can click on to minimize all windows (circled in red in the screenshot).
This Desktop Preview functionality can be added to XP/Vista by a small freeware utility.
All in all, the Snap, Shake and Peek features in Windows 7 Aero give you more choices about how to manage your windows.
- Debra Littlejohn Shinder, MVP
deb@shinder.net www.debshinder.com
Mosquito on September 07, 2009 at 06:01 PM
You can also use Windows key+arrow key to cycle through the maximizing to each side feature as well. For instance, if I hit windows key+left arrow, the current window maximizes to the left side of the monitor it's on, if I hit it again it maximizes on the right side of my second monitor, again and I get it at its original size, but on the left side of my second monitor, one more time, and it maximizes in the left half of my second monitor, one more time, and it's maximized on the second half of the first monitor, and one more time to return to the original position. Good thing to know, I also liked finding out about using shift for the second monitor...
bluetooth software on September 16, 2009 at 02:35 AM
Just like in so many things, the "just started" part is the hardest. But when you begin to know/learn how it runs, you'll surely appreciate it.
eberger on February 23, 2010 at 07:56 AM
the aero snap would be even nicer if it could support more than 2 viewports. Does anyone know if this can be done?
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BAMaustin on June 07, 2010 at 09:03 AM
So is there a momentary override?
Windows is getting more and more bossy. The Windows designers often assume that they know how I work. Vista is a good example of how well this arrogance has served Microsoft. And here they go again. Adding a new behavior without giving us a simple way to disable it or override momentarily.
Say that I learn that shake is useful only once every month or so. Or perhaps I have a userbase that has a twitchy disability. Or maybe they are likely to panic if everything on the desktop vanished. (Like when name labels persistently disappear under WinXP when Thumbnail view is selected while holding the Shift key. Who had that 'brilliant' idea?)
Any of those would make it more resource efficient for the OS to NOT monitor for a shake behavior but only accept that behavior when a modifier key is held. But I certainly want an momentary override to NOT snap or peek too.
Looks like it can be disabled entirely but I haven't heard about a momentary override. Gee, thanks Microsoft.
Here's a webpage on webtrickz.com that describes disabling:
Disable Aero Snap, Aero Shake & Aero Peek in Windows 7
by Mayur on June 5, 2010
in Windows 7
http://webtrickz.com/disable-aero-snap-aero-shake-aero-peek-in-windows-7/
usa wholesale dropshippers on March 31, 2011 at 03:25 AM
And by pressing windows+down arrow key will minimize the current window and pressing windows+up arrow key right after this will restore that window. Overall these features make easy to navigate windows desktop work and it feels so light and natural in windows 7 rather than installing extra utility for windows XP and Vista.
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