Vista Navigation

This is article 4 of my Vista Blogs. I have spent some time looking at, and working with, Vista, and have separated various new features into several different articles. In this article I am going to talk about the way in which Vista has been updated to make it easier for users to move from application to application.

Flip 3D

Although this isn’t necessarily a very helpful business tool, it is one of my favourite new features in Vista! The user interface is enhanced, and if like me you have many applications open at once, it makes it much easier to navigate around them. As with previous Operating Systems, the standard Alt/Tab functionality is there, however it shows much more information to the user, it shows the actual document not just an icon (a similar feature is available to Win XP users on a download – see the Microsoft website for more information).

Fig 1. Screen shot of the Alt/Tab view on Vista

However, the most impressive way to navigate is using the Windows Key/Tab (and then mouse scroll or use Tab), the windows are placed at an angle in quite a large size. Again all the items are shown with content, and not as icons. If one is music then the music will continue to play, if a video is playing then it will continue to play.

Fig 2. Example of scrolling through the open applications using the Windows key/Tab functionality

Preview from the toolbar

Instead of highlighting an open application in toolbar and just getting the application or document name, Vista gives the user a thumbnail of the application itself, along with a location of the item. Again, this gives the user more information to allow them to make the right choice of application to maximise.

Fig 3. Example of the preview thumbnail from the toolbar

Kirsty Lowe