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.