In just three short days, Finestra has had two releases. How’s that for a release cycle? First, and years after the original project began, Finestra has reached 1.0. I think this release really lives up to the title of the world’s favorite virtual desktop program for Windows. This release added Windows 7 taskbar support, new graphics, and a ton of performance and usability enhancements. In short, it was a great release, very stable and streamlined.

Of course, as with all big releases, there was a lot of immediate feedback for several small tweaks. For example, while it had been on the to-do list, adding an option to disable taskbar switching on Windows 7 had slipped my mind. There were also a couple of small bug fixes that needed to be fixed, so it was decided that a quick second release should be made.

Besides bug fixes, you will also find that version 1.1, released yesterday, is even faster than the 1.0 release when switching desktops due to a small performance tweak that had been overlooked previously. Technical note: Finestra now caches process names from process IDs as the name lookup turned out after some performance testing to be very slow. Switching desktops is now nearly instantaneous, even for people like myself with dozens of open windows. Performance has always been a big deal for virtual desktops programs, and Finestra is no different. If you have any kind of performance issue while using Finestra, it is a bug, and did not show up in testing. In that case, you can open an issue in the issue tracker and we’ll try to get to the bottom of it.

Version 1.1 also adds a shiny new welcome screen that fits much better in Vista and 7. The options window also has had a few additions and tweaks to allow you to customize the preview window shown from the tray icon and concerning application rules.

Of course, if you haven’t downloaded the latest version yet, you can find it at its CodePlex project site. Let us know what you think!