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Submission details

-5 +7/-12 votes

Bug: [Win]+[number] hotkeys map to taskbar entries as if grouped... even if grouping is disabled

Submitted by sfsdfd on June 28, 2009 to Annoyance, Bug, Usability

Vista started the trend of co-opting the [Win]+[number] hotkey combination. These hotkeys referred to icons in the Quick Launch toolbar: [Win]+1 activated the first Quick Launch icon; [Win]+2 activated the second; etc. Not a bad idea, although I never used it.

W7 changes this behavior (since the Quick Launch bar is not enabled by default), and now uses those keystrokes to bring particular windows to the foreground. However, there is a bug in in this implementation.

It appears that the keystrokes are mapped to grouped taskbar entries. If the user opens three IE windows and two Explorer windows, then the taskbar shows two entries: one for the IE group, and one for the Explorer window group. Accordingly, Win+1 toggles among all three IE windows, while Win+2 toggles between the Explorer window entries. This is logical and helpful.

HOWEVER, if the user has unchecked the "group taskbar entries" option, the taskbar now shows five entries. Yet, the Win+[number] hotkeys still map to the groups, so [Win]+1 toggles among the first three taskbar entries, while [Win]+2 toggles between the fourth and fifth entries. This doesn't make any sense: the mappings are based on a semantic that does not exist.

When the user has unchecked the "group taskbar entries" option, reconfigure the [Win]+[number] hotkey combination to match the actual taskbar entries instead of the (nonexistent) groups.

High

High

Not fixed

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