The preview screen shows thumbnails of all open windows. It furthermore draws a border around the active window, and displays its title at the top.

It is a fast alternative to clicking on program windows in the Windows taskbar. Alt-Tab Tuner has been designed by Happy Bulldozer, who is the mastermind behind other programs like Aero Tuner which we have reviewed in the past.

Alt-Tab Tuner basically offers controls to change the layout and design of the Alt-Tab preview window.

Lets take a closer look at the functionality that the program offers:

• Change the number of rows and columns that display thumbnails
• Change the top / bottom / side margins
• Change the spacing of elements
• Change icon shift and size
• Change the thumbs size
• Change fade out and transparency
• Switch to old style alt-tab dialog

It is hard to see but the windows in the modified Alt-Tab preview are actually larger than the old windows. Alt-Tab Tuner offers controls to manipulate the design of the Alt-Tab interface, which is for instance helpful for users who want to see larger thumbnail previews, or smaller ones to fit more preview windows directly on screen.

The program comes with a switch to automatically restart Windows Explorer after clicking on Apply. It requires a restart or log off before the changes become visible otherwise.

The portable program can reset the settings to their defaults. Alt-Tab Tuner is available for download at Deviant Art. (via)

The software is a alt-tab feature replacement for Windows. It replaces the standard Alt-Tab task switcher, and adds some cool functionality to it.

For starters, pressing Alt-Tab after installing Vista Switcher and making sure it is running displays larger preview images of the selected task, and a task listing that is excellent to work with.

Users can still cycle through all open tasks by pressing the tab key, or Shift-Tab key, and Vista Switcher will automatically display a preview thumbnail of the active tasks.

The mouse can be used as well in addition to the keyboard to select a task from the list. The application supports scrolling through the open tasks with the mouse wheel, or by directly placing the mouse cursor on a listed task row.

vista switcher

Vista Switcher in addition to that adds the new keyboard shortcut Alt + `to the Windows system. This can be used to cycle through all open windows of a single application, for instance through all Word or Excel documents.

List of all hotkeys

Alt + Tab Switch between open windows
Alt + ` (Backtick) Switch between open windows of a single application (for example, MS Word documents or Explorer folders)
Ctrl + Alt + Tab Switch between open windows on the current monitor (monitor with the mouse pointer or active window)
Win + F12 * Show the list of all open windows (“Sticky” mode)
Win + F11 * Show the list of open windows of the active application (“Sticky” mode)

Task List Navigation

Arrow Keys,
Page Up, Page Down,
Home, End Navigate the task list
` (Backtick) Navigate to the next window of the selected application
1, 2, …, 9, 0 Select the task number 1, 2, …, 9, 10 (hold down the number key for a while to switch to the selected task)
Shift + Arrow Keys Select the current task and navigate the list
Insert, S Select the current task and go to the next
Backspace, D Deselect the current task and go to the next
A Select all / Deselect all
Delete Remove selected task(s) from the list

Windows Management

Space, Enter Switch to the selected task
F2, M Minimize selected task(s)
C Cascade selected tasks on the desktop.
V Tile vertically selected tasks on the desktop
H Tile horizontally selected tasks on the desktop
F6, < Restore selected task(s)
F7, > Maximize selected task(s)
F4, X Close selected task(s)
F8, T Terminate selected task(s)

Other

F9, – Sort the task list by title
F10, + Sort the task list by application (groups on the taskbar)
E Explore the EXE path of the selected task
P Open the Preferences dialog
App (or Menu) Show the context menu

As you can see, there are lots of helpful shortcuts. Tasks can be activated by pressing their reference number on the keyboard, they can be sorted, terminated, their windows maximized or their root folder opened in Windows Explorer.

The preferences offer options to change some of the behavior of the program. Here it is possible to disable the autostart of the program, change the way the items are shown in the task list including the ability to disable the preview thumbnail, configure multi-monitor system support or define exclusions.

task manager

Best of all, Vista Switcher is offered free of charge, and unlike its name suggests compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Several of the settings can be changed in the settings of the program including the width of the alt tab window, if window previews should be displayed and the icon size. A right-click on any icon in the tab manager will open a context menu with options to manipulate the selected program window. It is for example possible to set the window to be always on top, minimize it to the system tray (even if the program itself is not supporting that feature), to blacklist it so that it is not being displayed in the tab manager anymore or to ghost it. Ghosting will simply change the opacity of the selected window so that contents behind can be accessed without having to move or close the window in the foreground.

Another interesting function that is added by Alt Tab Thingy is a window preview in the Windows taskbar similar to the preview that is introduced in Windows 7. The previews that are provided by the program are limited to windows that are not minimized.

Other options that might be of interest to some users are the ability to change the screen resolution, automatic minimizing or closing of Windows Explorer windows or to enable dragging and resizing of windows by clicking anywhere on the window.

Alt Tab Thingy is a resource friendly application that can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

The left image displays the way the Alt Tab Replacement handles this process. A small window pops up whenever you press ALT + TAB that displays the information that are shown in the left image.

A preview image of the current active tab will be displayed if it has not been minimized in the taskbar. Switching through the open windows displays a screenshot of the current window that would be opened.

If the window has been minimized only the information in the taskbar are displayed. Programs that reside in the system tray are not shown at all. But those are not shown as well with the original way of handling things.