How in the Tech

Quickly Close Applications from the Windows 7 Taskbar

By Adam Myers ⋅ May 21, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Windows 7

I’ve been running the Windows 7 beta on my main production machine since it’s release to the general public early this year. It’s been a pleasantly fantastic experience but you should also be aware that I was one of the few that wasn’t anti-Vista. Even still, many tech enthusiasts agree that Microsoft has gotten this version correct. Windows 7 is Vista with an extra gloss of tweaks and refinements. The beta has been anything but beta – in the sense that stability is rock solid, a true testament on just how much effort Microsoft has put into this product. I’m not even compelled to upgrade to the release candidate build that was made available in April.

As I mentioned, Microsoft spent a lot of time on the little nuances and refinements that don’t really stand out on a feature checklist but really hit a homerun with the user experience. I’m sure all of these are documented out there, but I probably have a couple hmm that’s really clever moments a week since February. I’m really keen on efficiency and any procedure that can be streamlined and refined to use fewer mouse clicks is a huge draw to me. One such refinement in 7 is the ability to close applications from the taskbar. Now, you could always right-click on the taskbar window and select close but with Windows 7, the preview window on the taskbar includes a nice red X that can be clicked to close the application. A process that took 2 clicks before is now down to one. It gets better though. Instead of having to mouse over to the X you can get away with just a single middle-click for the same effect.

You can see how this isn’t some super amazing feature that should be highlighted in the marketing materials but as the product continues to mature, it’s the little things like this that start to make a difference, to me at least.