What does "Animate controls and elements inside windows" do?
Turn this off to nix the slow-fade effect on buttons and tabs in
dialog boxes, the cyclic pulsating effect on the default button, and
the fading scrollbar arrows. Buttons will still glow blue as you roll
over them with the mouse, but they’ll do it sans the delay.
What does "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing" do?
This controls the squeezing and stretching that happens to windows
when you minimize, restore, and maximize them. Leave it on to see
where a window went when you minimize it, or turn it off to make
windows pop into position when you minimize, maximize, and restore.
This option also affects the disappearing/reappearing taskbar if you
have both the Auto-hide the taskbar setting in Taskbar and Start Menu
Properties and the Show window contents while dragging option
(described later) enabled.
What are "Animations in the taskbar and Start Menu"?
This controls the animated jump lists (see Chapter 2), fading task
thumbnail previews, and the sliding taskbar buttons. Turn it off to
speed up the taskbar. This setting was named Slide taskbar buttons in
earlier versions of Windows.
Source Windows 7 Annoyances: Tips, Secrets, and Solutions