Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Fun Days

Friday was May 4th.
May the Fourth be with you!

Saturday was 05/05.
Cinco de Mayo!

Sunday was 05/06/07.
How come nobody pointed this out? At 08:09:10 it would have been especially exciting. And I missed it! :(
...but Sunday was only 05/06/07 if you're going MM/DD/YY. I generally go DD/MM/YY, so I suppose I'll wait until 05/06/07 -- that is, June 5.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

New Computer Update: Nice Vista Touches

As I use Vista more, I notice more and more nice little touches. Long Zheng has blogged about a couple nice ones, and here are a few more. (Note that some have been mentioned in the comments over there. Hey, I can't be completely original...)

Calendar Zooming

Click once on the clock, and it brings up a calendar. No, not the date settings, but a real calendar. Mr. Zheng mentioned that, but what he didn't mention was that if you click on the month, it zooms out to show the whole year. If you click the year, it zooms out to show the decade. Click once more, and it'll show the whole century. All with nice animation.

Also: multiple time zones; clock that doesn't look like Windows 95
What could be improved: link to open in Windows Calendar; show next appointment from Windows Calendar

Gigantic Icons

Hold Ctrl and scroll when you're at the desktop to make your icons tiny or huge... really huge. Depending on what you have on there, there are some really nice-looking icons. Allows for a pretty slick looking, uncluttered desktop. And it encourages me to keep my desktop clean. :)

WinKey + Number

Shortcut for Quick Launch shortcuts. WinKey + 1 for the first shortcut, WinKey + 2 for the second, etc. Not sure if this is new in Vista, but it sure is handy.

Per-Application Volume Mixer

For when I want to leave my music at the volume it is, but turn down AIM and IE.

Also: sound icon changes depending on volume
What could be improved: bug where blank app controls show up en masse; fixed just by closing and re-opening mixer

Auto Scroll in Folder Tree

No horizontal scroll bar needed. Vista scrolls to the right or left automatically as you navigate.

Breadcrumb Folder Navigation

I mentioned this earlier, but really, it's great. Y'know, with the little drop-down arrows between each folder name.

Previous Versions

Right-click a file, click Properties, and then Previous Versions. Great if you save over something you need by accident.

Also: delete a file by accident? Previous Versions still has it archived

Copy File Animation

It's really cool. And glowy. Try it. I actually started at it for a full minute or more, admiring its beauty.

Flip 3D

Especially in Flip 3D. That particular feature may not worth the hype, but it's not as useless as I initially thought. When I have a ton of stuff open at once, as I tend to, it's nice for finding a particular document or folder window because I immediately recognize it visually.

Also: just plain looks cool, especially with video; live thumbnails in Alt+Tab and upon hovering on a taskbar item

Reliability and Performance Manager

Keep track of errors and application failures, as well as your system performance as a whole. Nice.

InkBall

Fun game, though I still miss Pinball.

I'll add more as I remember them...