Making Use of the Aero Interface

If you have Windows 7 or 8, you have the Aero interface built in to your desktop, unless you have disabled it.  (Vista also has a version of the Aero interface, but the features of this tip do not work.)  The Aero interface contains several very useful features that you might want to try out and use on a regular basis.  Here are four of the most useful uses:

1) Areo Peek - When you have a window open, hover your mouse over the taskbar icon to see a thumbnail of the window.  This is useful if you have multiple windows open for the same program, and you want to see which window you are maximizing before you open it.

2) Aero Snap - Aero snap is perhaps the most useful tool in Windows 7 (at least for me).  This allows you to "snap" a window to your monitor.  There are two different ways to snap.  First, you can drag the window to the very top of your monitor.  Before you release the mouse, you will see a small circle that expands to fill the screen.  After you see the circle, you can release the mouse, and the window you are dragging will instantly fill the screen.

You can also snap to the right or left side of your screen.  This will cause the current window to fill only the half of the screen you are snapping it to.  This is very useful when you have two windows you want to use simultaneously.

3) Aero Shake - By grabbing the title bar of a window and quickly shaking it back and forth, you can quickly minimize all other windows.  Shaking the window again will restore all the windows you minimized.

4) View Desktop - On the far right side of the taskbar (just to the right of the clock), there is a small button.  (The button usually blends in with the clock until you hover your mouse over it.)  Clicking on this button will minimize all windows and show you the desktop.  Clicking it again will restore all windows.  In Windows 7, you can hover over the button and have all windows disappear until you move the mouse again.