What’s changing in the Windows 7 RC?

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Overnight, Microsoft’s Chaitanya Sareen posted a list of 36 detailed changes that are being checked into the Windows 7 release candidate as a result of feedback from the beta test. A few highlights:

  • Direct support for playing back .MOV files (like the ones my digital camera records), without requiring me to install QuickTime. Hallelujah.
  • Some tweaks to the Libraries feature, designed to make it more easily understandable.
  • A better interface for saving custom themes.
  • A slew of changes to the taskbar and jump lists, including some visual tweaks that “squeeze in 24-39% more icons before the taskbar scrolls.” If I understand that correctly (no visual is included), it should also get rid of the excessive open space on the taskbar.

A change I don’t see on this list is a bug that currently affects Windows Explorer in the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000). If you right-click the Libraries heading, one option on the shortcut menu is Delete:

image

And if you click Delete, sure enough, the Libraries heading goes away. For a few minutes. Or until you open a new instance of Windows Explorer. That setting should be persistent.

This bug has apparently been reported several times by beta testers, with each instance closed as “Won’t fix.” That seems wrong to me, and I can’t imagine how I am going to explain this behavior in Windows 7 Inside Out.

[Update: In the coments, Microsoft’s Brandon Paddock points out that the Delete option was removed post-beta and is gone from current builds. Thanks, Brandon!]

Published by Ed Bott

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8 thoughts on “What’s changing in the Windows 7 RC?”

  1. ~^~ Direct support for playing back .MOV files – Wonderful ~^~
    I have always loathed QuickTime

    This is a happy day indeed.

  2. Direct support for MOV playback is fantastic! I too loathe QuickTime! The less Apple software I need to use, the better.

  5. Neither Vista SP1 nor Windows 7 recognise my notebok`s Atheros Wirelss Card by default or by the means of Windows Update. The driver that gets installed automatically is unable to get the card working.
    Although the support for .MOV files is great news, Quicktime is still required for .3gp files and viewing Quicktime Videos in Internet Explorer. 😦

  6. How about allowing the width of the scroll bar to be changed? People with vision problems and/or hand-shakiness would appreciate it.

  7. Native support for .MOV files is great news. QuickTime, along with Quicken, has historically been one of the worst Windows citizens around. I remember QuickTime wasn’t so bad in the Windows 3.1 days, but it kept getting buggier as time went by. (What is it about product whose names start with “Quick”? Quick coding? Quick testing?)

    Next step should be PDF, both creation and viewing. The only trouble is that Microsoft rolls over and plays dead any time legal threats come out of Adobe.

  8. I’d REALLY like to see improvement in the area of networking with XP PCs. I’ve spent hours trying to get Windows 7 to automatically recognize and link to XP shares on my network – critical to my automated backup system among other things. So far nada. The issue is confounding many others on the support forums. So far there seems to be no definitive answer. Every time I start up I must manually connect to my network drives before my apps can use them. This was never a problem in Vista.

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