One of the first Windows 7 changes that developers

One of the first Windows 7 changes that developers should pay attention to is the new Windows Taskbar. This new feature introduces a functionality that developers need to understand so they can take full advantage of it in their own applications to better enhance their end users’ experiences.
The new Taskbar is the most noticeable change to Windows 7 when you first log on. The Windows 7 Taskbar is an application-launching and window-switching mechanism that consolidates the functionalities from previous Windows Desktop mechanisms such as Quick Launch, Recent Documents, Notification area icons, desktop shortcuts, and running application windows.
If you are unfamiliar with and haven’t seen any demonstrations of the Windows 7 Taskbar, please watch Chitnya’s online Windows 7 Taskbar in Action demo during his Welcome to the New Desktop PDC session. This will give you some context for the technical material we are going to cover here. Additional information about the Windows 7 Taskbar can be found in The Windows 7 Taskbar E7 blog and in Channel 9 Windows Taskbar Webcast series.
In this article, we address Windows 7 Taskbar functionality and provide a high-level overview of its programming model to help developers to better prepare for Windows 7. Obviously, this will not be a comprehensive step-by-step developer guide to the Windows 7 Taskbar, but rather a broad overview. Please look for additional content about the Windows 7 taskbar in future posts.
The Windows 7 Taskbar is designed to provide users with quick and easy access to those “things” they use all the time. “Things” can be any type of content such as pictures, music, word documents or links and shortcuts to applications or folders. By quick and easy access, we mean accessing commonly used programs with a single mouse click or significantly reducing the number of clicks per operation. Quick and easy access also means users should be able to “jump” directly to those things they want to work with and start working with them in a single mouse click. To provide this functionality, Taskbar introduces the concept of “Jump Lists.”