This article was published on December 17, 2010

One man’s dream of how multitasking should work on Windows Phone 7


One man’s dream of how multitasking should work on Windows Phone 7

If it does not exist, you can always build it yourself, right? That was the mindset behind Jeremy Bell and his most recent creation, a mock-up of what “a proper task switcher and notification/background-service manager” would look like for WP7.

We like what he has put together very much, if for no other reason that we feel the features that he is tinkering with are sorely needed in the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Mr. Bell’s designed user interface would be loaded by “press[ing] and hold[ing] the back button from anywhere,” which would bring up the following screen:

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The developer described the above video with the following bullet points, outlining what his idea would do:

  • The UI would allow the user to manage live tiles and toast notifications from one place. Very handy!
  • It would allow the user to view, pause, and cancel any background services currently running, including (hopefully) any custom background services initiated by a third party app.
  • The little bars next to each service represent the amount of CPU usage that service is taking up.
  • When a user clicks on an app to switch to it, the idea is that it would be moved to the top of the back stack after it is re-launched. That way you wouldn’t go back to it again if you hit the back button normally.

We like what he has come up with, and besides bringing you the interesting project, we do sincerely hope that Microsoft gives the clip a watch and a think. Windows Phone 7 is an excellent platform, but it is also one that can be improved.

This sort of work ‘on the side’ is exactly what Microsoft should encourage for the WP7 platform.

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