Windows 7 Taskbar, ‘Peek’ and Multitouch Gestures Caught On Video

Our in-depth preview of Windows 7 mentioned a few major features that didn’t quite make it into the copy we tested, but the wily crew at Chilean site FayerWayer have caught a more advanced build on (sickeningly shaky) video. Most notably, the long hands-on shows off the new dock-esque taskbar, with decent task grouping, contextual program options and a slick new glassy look. Touch navigation is demonstrated in IE and Word, among others, but support is kind of patchy — IE has smooth inertial scrolling, while Word and and the image viewer just have embarrassingly choppy, albeit multitouch, gesture support. The ‘peek’ function, which appears to be a late but worthy answer to OS X’s Expose, is activated and looks fairly useful. This is the best evidence yet that the Windows 7 user experience may be drastically different from Vista, despite the superficial similarities evident in early builds. The video runs though Windows 7’s solid gesture customization engine and a few other interesting tidbits, so it’s probably worth downing some Dramamine and powering through. [FayerWayer]