Launch or maximize programs with the shortcut Windows key + 1, 2, 3

Windows 7 certainly isn’t hurting for new shortcut keys, and this one can be applied in a number of ways, including some we probably haven’t thought of yet. With it, you can launch a program from the keyboard—or bring its minimized or buried window to the forefront—so long as the program is showing live or pinned icons in the taskbar.

Each program icon in your taskbar, whether pinned there or representing a launched app, gets assigned a virtual number, starting with “1” for the leftmost icon and increasing by one as you go right. If you tap the Windows key in combination with a numeral, it will launch or bring forward the program corresponding to it in the taskbar. So, for example, Windows key + 1 will launch the leftmost taskbar program icon.

Why is this useful, as opposed to using one of the many other window- or task-switching options in Windows 7? We can think of one good application: If you pin a series of frequently used programs to the left side of the taskbar, you can launch them in sequence shortly after bootup (or at any time you choose) with a few brisk keystrokes.

App switching made easy with Windows key + T

The keyboard shortcut Alt + Tab is the ancient Windows standby for switching between apps. And those of us immersed in Windows Vista (on a PC with the enhanced Aero interface active) have seen Aero Flip, Vista’s flashy means of task switching, in which the Windows key + Tab combination lets you cycle through three-dimensional planar renderings of your open windows.

Aero Flip and old-reliable Alt + Tab continue to work in Windows 7. But the new OS introduces yet another means of task switching, which stands apart because it lets you cycle in turn through not only all open apps but also see grouped windows within each app. It’s tied in, once again, with the taskbar rethink in Windows 7. It’s the shortcut Windows key + T.

Repeatedly hitting this combination will scroll you through the different apps that you have open, popping up thumbnail previews above each program’s icon in the taskbar. If you have multiple windows open for a given app, you’ll see all of the windows grouped as a set of thumbnails. Same behavior with Internet Explorer 8 (though, interestingly, not with Firefox): If you have multiple tabs open in a browser, you’ll see each tab displayed as a discrete window thumbnail. Releasing the keys with a particular app thumbnail active, interestingly, doesn’t launch the program but leaves the thumbnail suspended; you need to click it or hit Enter to bring up that program. (That’s unlike with Alt + Tab or Aero Flip; with those, releasing the keys brings the window to which you’ve cycled to the fore.)

And, as mentioned earlier in a previous tip, there’s a hidden new option with these thumbnails: You can close any window via its taskbar thumbnail by clicking on it with your middle mouse button. You don’t necessarily have to navigate to the little red “X” in the corner of the thumbnail.

Let Windows tune your LCD for top text legibility

Windows 7 is the first Windows OS for which, at its introduction, LCD monitors have truly been the overwhelming display standard. (They were well on their way at the time of Vista’s introduction, but the trend has accelerated with the ascendancy of laptops and the wholesale move to LCDs on desktop PCs.) The new OS includes a dedicated LCD-tweaking wizard that lets you improve the look of text on your screen. It’s called the ClearType Text Tuner (CTTT).

You access CTTT from the Windows Control Panel; click on the Displayitem, and, in the resulting dialog, click on Adjust ClearType text. That will launch the wizard. Make sure on the first screen that the box next toTurn on ClearType is checked, and follow the prompts. Windows 7 will first check that your monitor or monitors are running at their native resolutions. (Native resolution generally delivers the best possible text legibility.) Then, it will take you through some comparisons reminiscent of a vision test at the eye doctor. The wizard runs a series of visual tests, asking you which block of text looks clearer to you, like this:

When you’re done, chances are you’ll see a noticeable difference in text quality. After you’ve run CTTT, you may wish to return to the Display Control Panel and tweak the size of default Windows text. Under the subhead Make it easier to read what’s on your screen, try tweaking the setting from Smaller to Medium or Larger if that’s more comfortable for you. If you do indeed decide to change the default text size, however, we recommend running CTTT again so your screen is optimized for the new size.

Pin frequently used files or folders to taskbar program icons (Jump Lists)

Windows 7’s taskbar rethink means that a large number of the tips and tweaks here involve this thin bit of real estate, but here’s another taskbar-related tidbit that’s nonetheless invaluable. It’s been possible to set up shortcuts to frequently used files or folders on the Windows Desktop for ages, of course, but accessing them requires minimizing or otherwise moving around windows to uncover them. Windows 7, however, allows you to “pin” files or folders you use often onto relevant program icons in the taskbar for easy access, always keeping them above the desktop-window fray.

For example, say you often work with a spreadsheet file called “TAXES.XLS” in Excel. Launch Excel, then find the file “TAXES.XLS.” Left-click or right-click on the file itself, then drag it onto the Excel taskbar program icon. You should see a message to “Pin to Microsoft Excel”; when you do, release the mouse button.

The file will be added to what Windows 7 calls a Jump List, a list of frequently accessed files, folders, and actions that you can get to right from the taskbar via the program’s icon. Here's a sample Jump List for Microsoft Word:

For a Jump List to be at hand, the program needs to have been launched, however—or its icon permanently pinned to the taskbar.

Fix the Column views in Windows Live Mail

Here at ComputerShopper.com, some of the editors migrated their home PCs from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7, and we encountered a little glitch with Windows Live Mail that drove us bananas for the better part of an afternoon. We’d like to save you the same grief.

Our e-mails imported fine from XP’s Outlook Express, but we found that in the “Sent items” view in Live Mail, it was impossible to tell at a glance to whom we sent our mails. That’s because the columns in the default view didn’t include the one for the “To:” field. (Your mileage may vary. The missing “To:” field didn’t happen in another install we performed, but the next step—the grey-out issue—did.)

Simple enough, we thought—it’s easy to customize the view to show the “To:” field. You’d just hit Alt, go the View menu, choose the Columnsitem, and…hey wait a minute, the Columns menu option is greyed out! Hmmm. All we wanted was to restore this little column:

An afternoon of tweaking and searching later, we discovered that, strangely enough, repositioning the preview pane (the region of the screen that shows you a preview portion of a selected e-mail) was the only thing that would “un-grey” the Columns item on the View menu. This is likely a bug, and we’d expect it to be fixed before long. But how to work around it, for now?

In your Sent Mail view in Live Mail, hit Alt to bring up the menu bar, clickView > Layout, and in the Layout dialog box, change the Reading pane (Mail) entry to At the bottom of the message list. (You can also uncheck the Show the reading pane box if you’d like to get rid of the pane altogether.) Hit OK, and you should be able to access the Columns entry in the View menu to tweak the columns that are displayed.

Download Windows Live Essentials to restore common Windows apps

If you’re a Windows XP user who has just migrated to Windows 7, you’re likely to notice a few old friends missing: notably, a mail client (Outlook Express) and Windows Movie Maker. And if you’re using Vista, the Windows Mail, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery apps might be conspicuous by their absence in 7.

In Windows 7, Microsoft has moved these programs off-OS and made them part of a downloadable package of apps called “Windows Live Essentials.” (Why, if they’re “Essentials,” they’re not included as part of the OS is another story, though.) This is the Live Essentials page; the download link is below (click the page image to go there now, if you like):

You’ll need to sign up for a free Windows Live account to download the lot. (You may well already have one.) You may or may not need Live Essentials, depending on the e-mail client you tend to use and whether you already own some favorite photo- and video-editing software, but we think the download is worth the trouble, regardless. For one thing, the Windows Photo Gallery app has been bulked up a bit from Vista’s; it now has more editing functions, so it can be a time saver versus launching a full-featured photo editor. And Windows Movie Maker, as in Vista, incorporates the ability to burn a DVD Video direct from the app, so no need to fire up Nero, Roxio, or another big burning app for straightforward jobs. Check out the Live Essentials pack at http://download.live.com.