os x to vista, Vista, Windows

Another Vista bug?

I have discovered another issue with Vista which may well be a bug. If not, then the OS is certainly not behaving as expected.

On a pc the standard key combo for switching between apps and windows is Alt + Tab. Vista is no different. On holding down Alt and pressing Tab you are presented with a series of windows to chose between. Tabbing selects forward. Shift-tabbing selects back and where you stop, the selected window opens.

switching windows in Vista

But, you can also use your mouse to select out of sequence (if you don’t want to continue tabbing. Selecting the window with the mouse though does nothing. If you let go of the Alt key at this point, you won’t get the window you selected with the mouse opening up.

What you have to do is click on the window you want to have open up. Why? Surely if I select it with the mouse, that should be enough to tell the OS that this is the window I want to have open.

It is the little things like this guys which annoy users.

UPDATE – post updated to correct the incorrect insertion of the image above. Completely my fault – nothing to do with Vista. Thanks to Tis me for letting me know about the error in the comments.

6 thoughts on “Another Vista bug?”

  1. Just a quick aside.. don;t know if you’re having an issue with vista posting blogs.. but your pic you tried post in your blog comes up as code for me!

  2. Hmm… that never even occurred to me (and I suspect didn’t occur to the Vista team). I always viewed it as a hover “preview” as occasionally the windows are hard to make out what’s actually on them with a click to confirm.

    Have you tried Windows key + tab yet?

  3. Re the Alt+Tab thing. In the Windows world hovering is different to selecting. Sometime a Pain but this isn’t a bug. It’s expected behaviour.

  4. Ryan – it occured to me ‘cos that’s how it works on the Mac.

    Windows key + tab? No, I hadn’t tried that – nice one, thanks.

  6. My colleague got some really weird re-draw bugs. He had a semi transparent document icon that would not go away until he restarted!

    As for the alt-tab issue, windows tab gives you a good idea of whats on each screen and is certainly more useful than alt tab….but it eats up memory!

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