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In Win 7, alt-tab shows the transparent windows effect. It is bugging me because the screen change is distracting while I'm trying to figure out which window to switch to from thumbnail preview (and which is probably sufficient most of the time). So is there anyway to turn it off or delay it to like 6 second or so?

From the task bar the transparent windows effect is only brought up when I mouse over the actual thumbnails. I can bring it up only when I want it. So this is not an issue and if I have a choice, I do not want this to be turned off.

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repeat question? superuser.com/questions/45259/… – ricbax Nov 20 at 4:07

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You might find vistaswitcher more to your liking. It gives an instant preview box mid-screen (configurable), without doing the slow transparency fade. Try it!

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Hey this looks good. I'll give it a try. :) – huggie Nov 23 at 3:15
I still prefer the original grid layout and thumbnails. But this is at least one possible solution. Thanks. – huggie Nov 23 at 10:06
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You can fix this in performance; I had the same issue. It's not "our brain having problems," it's crappy usability due to feature bloat. Alt-tab was more or less perfect in Vista.

Go into Adjust Visual Effects (from Performance in the Control Panel) and uncheck Aero Peek.

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It's actually not feature bloat. Some of us find this feature very useful, and regularly alt-tab between windows to see what's going on there without needing to actually switch to it and then back again. Comes in quite in handy. If there were no way to turn it off it could be considered bad, as you have no way to opt out of it if you don't like it. But you have a way to turn it off, so it gives those who don't like it a way to not use it. – eidylon Dec 15 at 17:25
Problem is, you lose all Aero Peek features by disabling it, so no, there's no good way to disable the new alt-tab without losing other functionality. Besides, isn't what you describe the entire purpose of Win-tab? Why don't you use that and let us perfectly content alt-tabbers have our fast, simple, and uncluttered interface? Again, I call feature bloat! -Addendumb – Addendumb Dec 16 at 22:13
Wow, thanks for the tip. This has been bugging me for months. I actually use 2 computers. On one, Aero Peek works as intended, I guess. I cycle through the windows as the center box shows the current selection. On the other one, my Thinkpad T60, the center window disappears a split second after pressing Alt-Tab, and I am lost in a series of screens that fade in and out without knowing where I am. By turning Aero Peek off, I at least can use Alt-Tab again. – cdonner Dec 19 at 2:54
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You can mouse-hover the thumbnail preview at the center of the screen while you keep ALT+Tab depressed. Despite the background windows still cycling, the mouse motion will focus your attention on the thumbnails. I find this less confusing than repeatedly hitting tab while ALT is depressed. You then just click on the window you want to move.

Also Win+Tab is less confusing too. You may get used to it faster than Alt+Tab.

Note also that you can do the opposite. So far we have been trained into paying attention to the center thumbnails. But with the window cycling being offered with ALT+TAB you can train yourself into starting to disregard the center thumbnails and instead focus your attention on the window cycle. After a while I'm pretty sure you'll be wondering why was this ever a problem to you. It's all in our brain :)

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Say I have 15 windows open for various applications, then I think it's probably fair to say that thumbnails gives you an at-a-glance on all windows. Don't you find it faster to switch with thumbnails in this case? Because you know exacty that you'll need to press say 5 times to a particular window instead of checking it one by one. – huggie Nov 23 at 3:09
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Another trick you can do is use the "old" alt-tab that is present in Windows 7:

  1. Hold down the left alt key
  2. Tap the right alt key
  3. Still holding the left alt, use the tab key as you would normally to cycle through tasks

You'll notice that this uses the old alt-tab style switcher and does not fade out windows for you.

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