Hotkey to switch between windows in taskbar order in Windows 7
Is there a hotkey to cycle through open windows in the order that they appear on the taskbar. This should switch windows without additional keypresses.
I know of win+T. This shortcut puts focus on the first taskbar icon and allows you to select and display a window with up/down/enter. I would ideally like something like Ctrl+Win+Down to immediately switch to the next window.
If not, then is there any way to enable this behaviour on a completely locked down PC where I cannot install software, run executables or edit the registry?
For Win7, the tool 7+ Taskbar Tweaker can now do this. See the help file under section Advanced>Keyboard Shortcuts. It lets you assign any keyboard shortcut keys to actions 101 and 102:
101 - Switch to the window which is located on the left to the active window on the taskbar.
102 - Switch to the window which is located on the right to the active window on the taskbar.
Another option is pressing Win + number will switch to the icon in that numbered slot. It can also start the application if it's not open.
So for this task bar:
Win: Start menu
Win+1: Start or switch to Internet Explorer.
Win+2: Start or switch to Windows Explorer. Press repeatedly to select a window.
Win+3: Start or switch to Windows Media Player.
Win+4: Start or switch to Calculator.
Win+5: Start or switch to Notepad.
Win+6: Start or switch to that application I don't recognise.
AutoHotkey Script: TaskbarNavigation - Ordered left / right Cycle through Task Bar (Alt-Tab replacement)
BACKGROUND (MRU vs Cycling): Windows Alt+Tab operates off of MRU (Most Recently Used). Unfortunately this is quasi non-determinstic - if you don't have perfect memory of the current z-order of your windows - you don't know which buttons to push and how many times to push them in order to reach a particular window. Therefore you have to go into a keypress-->observation-->keypress-->observation cycle that might involve many iterations -- rather than just one iteration of observation-->keypress. The goal of this script is to allow you to look at the taskbar - choose the window you want to end up on - and be able to push some keys in one go with the knowing that you will get where you wanted to go at the end of those keypresses and won't need to check again to see where you now are.
Just press Win+T repeatedly. Shift+Win+T will move in the reverse direction.
A simple method is to use ALT+TAB. This keyboard shortcut has been around forever and lets you switch between all of your active windows and the desktop without using Aero.