Nice Windows 7 Feature – IE8 Download Progress

I’m running Windows 7 on my Dell Latitude D820 and attempting to find out my position on this product. It certainly installs easier, boots faster, seems faster, etc. I also hope to point out a few features that I like, that might not be so mainstream. There are many little nice additions/enhancements. I like seeing the ribbon controls on other applications – like Paint. There are many more, so every once in a while I’ll point one of these out.

Right off the bat, I really like the new task bar window model. One thing that I’ve done differently is to move the task bar to the left side of the screen (due to wide screen laptops). See the picture below. With the new task bar, I don’t see all of the app’s running. For example, if I am running IE8, I get an IE icon in the task bar. When the mouse is over that button, a set of windows appear. In the case of IE, a window for each tab appears even if there are different IE8 processes. I really like this.

Another favorable mini-feature is that when I’m doing a download, I can see a progress bar effect displayed on top of the IE8 button. Note the green overlay over 50% of the window as I was download the Lifecam Driver For Windows 7. Nice effect.