I have a complaint with a Windows 7 design issue. My complaint is less about the underpinnings and more a general trend I've been noticing.
Shortly after flat panel displays were released, companies came out with displays that were "page view", in other words they were taller than they were wide, for editing documents. In the typical business environment this is a good idea. When you think about it, most web pages are even designed to be vertically displayed. The taller your screen is, the more usable space you have.
Then, digital movies caught on and suddenly everyone needed a screen that was the same shape and ratio as that big silver screen at the local theater. Now, for the average-joe user, by the time they've got a taskbar provided by Windows (or Gnome or whatever) then opened their browser, things get smaller vertically. Add in the file menu, bookmarks toolbar, various plug in toolbars (for those people who can't resist installing the Yahoo toolbar, Google toolbar and don't forget the SearchMyWay toolbar.)
Next thing you know you have 1/2 a screen to display actual data.
Look closely at the screen snippet of Windows 7 and the taskbar. Have you noticed that the taskbar is now nearly double it's original height? Instead of text buttons naming each window, there's a large square icon reminiscent of the NeXT design style. Sure it looks good and is probably very functional, but think about the screen real-estate lost.
Window decorations
Couple that with the window borders as shown here and you'll realize that everything you do will nickel-and-dime you for more of your vertical space. The sides of a window are still somewhat narrow, but the tops and bottoms of the window are increasingly large in a cartoonish sort of way.
Give me a nice thin busybox over that any day. Personally I run a nice thin Compiz / Emerald theme and have a very small taskbar. My second monitor has no taskbar at all so I can do a full maximize. I've even streamlined my Firefox buttons to eliminate vertical space for the navigation buttons and chosen a thin theme.
Some day people may wake up and realize that it doesn't matter if you have a 25" diagonal widescreen monitor, you are still going to feel cramped vertically if things continue down this road.
Where should we maybe be concentrating design? Put the handles on the sides of the window instead of the top, move the taskbar to a vertical bar, make menus pop out from the sides. Keep your widescreen monitors to watch your movies, but to maximize that I think the design needs to take in account where the wasted space is, and where we're running short. Sure, it'll be a paradigm shift in design, but it's the next logical progression.
Bit late
Note that the new taskbar works much better than the Vista or XP ones when placed vertically. This restores most of the vertical screen real estate.
I realize this is old
However I do have a couple of suggestions (and it looks like Windows7 RTM has a shorter taskbar than the release you had back in Jan). I've been using auto-hide for years now, ever since way back in Win95 days and love it, I get full screen for all my aps and just touch the top of the screen with my monitor to get the taskbar (I'm also one of those weird folks who prefers the taskbar at the top).
Another thing I did with my Win7 install was to go into the "Advanced" appearance settings and change the size of the title bars and "caption buttons" (the close, minimize, maximize buttons) and the window borders to make them all smaller, thus reclaiming some screen real estate and making everything a bit less "bubbly" looking.
Simple solution!
I've had my taskbar on the right side of my window for years! Ever since XP...
That, and minimizing whatever bars you have on your browser, and narrowing down the bars to what you use only, especially in software you actually use for work, and after all everything you'll need to use occasionally is still accessible from in the menus. Pretty simple.
Plus in XP, that solved the problem with needing to run many applications at one and togggle between them. On my 15.4 inch screen, it barely took 6-7 apps on the taskbar before everything becomes unreadable. On the vertical taskbar, I could run up to 15 windows, and since width of each app represented doesn't change, you could always manage your open windows pretty easily.
It just needs a little time to get adjusted to it, but it didn't take me much before I because non-functional on a computer that has the taskbar at the bottom as usual.
Need something like KDE's
Need something like KDE's taskbar, where you can make it half the screen width, and align it center left or right.
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