End-user features
The appearance of Windows Explorer has changed significantly from Windows XP.
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The appearance of Windows Explorer has changed significantly from Windows XP.
* Windows Aero: a new hardware-based graphical user interface, named Windows Aero an acronym (possibly a backronym) for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. The new interface is intended to be cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than previous Windows, including new transparencies, animations and eye candy.
* Windows Shell: The new Windows shell is significantly different from Windows XP, offering a new range of organization, navigation, and search capabilities. Windows Explorer's task pane has been removed, integrating the relevant task options into the toolbar. A "Favorite links" pane has been added, enabling one-click access to common directories. The address bar has been replaced with a breadcrumb navigation system. The Start menu has changed as well; it no longer uses ever-expanding boxes when navigating through Programs. Even the word "Start" itself has been removed in favor of a blue Windows Orb.
* Windows Search (also known as Instant Search or search as you type): significantly faster and more thorough search capabilities. Search boxes have been added to the Start menu, Windows Explorer, and several of the applications included with Vista. By default, Instant Search indexes only a small number of folders such as the start menu, the names of files opened, the Documents folder, and the user's e-mail.
Windows Gadgets
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Windows Gadgets
* Windows Sidebar: A transparent panel anchored to the side of the screen where a user can place Desktop Gadgets, which are small applets designed for a specialized purpose (such as displaying the weather or sports scores). Gadgets can also be placed on other parts of the Desktop, if desired. The technology bears some resemblance to the older Active Channel and Active Desktop technologies introduced with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.5, but the gadgets technology is more versatile, and is not integrated with the Internet Explorer browser in the same way as Active Desktop.
* Windows Internet Explorer 7: new user interface, tabbed browsing, RSS, a search box, improved printing, Page Zoom, Quick Tabs (thumbnails of all open tabs), a number of new security protection features, and improved web standards support.[7]
* Windows Media Player 11, a major revamp of Microsoft's program for playing and organizing music and video. New features in this version include word wheeling (or "search as you type"), a completely new and highly graphical interface for the media library, photo display and organization, and the ability to share music libraries over a network with other Vista machines, Xbox 360 integration, and support for other Media Center Extenders.
* Backup and Restore Center: Includes a backup and restore application that gives users the ability to schedule periodic backups of files on their computer, as well as recovery from previous backups. Backups are incremental, storing only the changes each time, minimizing the disk usage. It also features CompletePC Backup which backs up an entire computer as an image onto a hard disk or DVD. CompletePC Backup can automatically recreate a machine setup onto new hardware or hard disk in case of any hardware failures.
* Windows Mail: A replacement for Outlook Express that includes a completely replaced mail store that improves stability, and enables real-time search. New Junk mail filtering.[8]
Windows Update in Windows Vista RTM with Windows Ultimate Extras
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Windows Update in Windows Vista RTM with Windows Ultimate Extras
* Windows Calendar is a new calendar and task application.
* Windows Photo Gallery, a photo and movie library management application. WPG can import from digital cameras, tag and rate individual items, adjust colors and exposure, create and display slideshows (with pan and fade effects), and burn slideshows to DVD.
* Windows DVD Maker, a companion program to Windows Movie Maker, which provides the ability to create video DVDs based on a user's content.
* Windows Meeting Space is the replacement for NetMeeting. Users can share applications (or their entire Desktop) with other users on the local network, or over the Internet using peer-to-peer technology.
* Windows Media Center, which was previously exclusively bundled as a separate version of Windows XP, known as Windows XP Media Center Edition, will be incorporated into the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista.
Purble Place was included as a game in Windows Vista.
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Purble Place was included as a game in Windows Vista.
* Games: Every game included with Windows has been rewritten to take advantage of Vista's new graphics capabilities. New games include Chess Titans, Mahjong Titans and Purble Place. The Games section will also hold links and information to all games on the user's computer. One piece of information that will be shown is the game's ESRB rating.
Previous Versions
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Previous Versions
* Previous Versions automatically creates backup copies of files and folders, with daily frequency. Users can also create "shadow copies" by setting a System Protection Point using the System Protection tab in the System control panel. The user can be presented multiple versions of a file throughout a limited history and be allowed to restore, delete, or copy those versions. This feature is available only in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista and is inherited from Windows Server 2003.[9]
* The Windows Mobility Center is a new control panel that centralizes the most relevant information related to mobile computing (e.g. brightness, sound, battery level / power scheme selection, wireless network, screen orientation, presentation settings, etc.).
* Windows Update: Software and security updates have been simplified, now operating solely via a control panel instead of as a web application. Mail's spam filter and Defender's definitions will also be automatically updated via Windows Update.
* Parental controls: Allows administrators to control which websites, programs, and games each standard user can use and install.
* Windows SideShow: Enables the auxiliary displays on newer laptops or on supported Windows Mobile devices. It is meant to be used to display Device gadgets while the computer is on or off.
* Speech recognition is fully integrated into Vista. It is an improved version of Microsoft Speech Recognition currently working under Office 2003, with a better interface, a rich and flexible set of commands, and an extensive command-and-control capability to activate the computer by voice. Unlike the Office 2003 version, which works only in Office and WordPad, it works for dictation in multiple applications. In addition, it currently supports several languages: English US and UK, Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Classical and Simplified), and Japanese. Switching between the languages is, however, still quite inconvenient though not impossible. The quality of recognition (accuracy in dictation) is very high, at least as good as Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 ('high recognition' normally means no less than 98% accuracy). For comparative data and evaluations of Windows Vista Speech (WSR) see
http://speech.even-zohar.com. For discussions, files and information see the Yahoo Microsoft Speech Group (
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ms-speech).
* Many new fonts, including several designed especially for screen reading, and new high-quality Chinese (Yahei, JhengHei), Japanese (Meiryo) and Korean (Malgun) fonts. See Windows Vista typefaces. ClearType has also been enhanced and enabled by default.
* Touchscreen support will be included as part of Tablet PC, which will be incorporated as a standard component.[10]
* Problem Reports and Solutions, a new control panel which allows users to see previously sent problems and any solutions or additional information that is available.
* Improved audio controls allow the system-wide volume or volume of individual audio devices and even individual applications to be controlled separately.
* Full Symbolic links support has been made available for the first time to Windows users in Vista. [11]
* System Performance Assessment is a benchmark used by Windows Vista to regulate the system for optimum performance. Games can take advantage of this feature, reading the data produced by this benchmark in order to fine-tune the game details. The benchmark tests CPU, RAM, Graphics acceleration (2D and 3D) and disk access.[12]
* Enable advanced performance for Hard Disks - When the option is enabled all the data that gets written to the drive is first stored in the cache, and then later written to the disk
[edit] Core technologies
Windows Vista is intended to be a technology-based release, to provide a solid base to include advanced technologies, many of which will be related to how the system functions, and hence not readily visible to the user. An example of this is the complete restructuring of the architecture of the audio, print, display, and networking subsystems; while the results of this work will be clearly visible to software developers, end-users will only see what appear to be evolutionary changes in the user interface.
Vista includes technologies such as ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive which employ fast flash memory (located on USB drives and hybrid hard disk drives respectively) to improve system performance by caching commonly-used programs and data. This manifests itself in improved battery life on notebook computers as well, since a hybrid drive can be spun down when not in use. Another new technology called SuperFetch utilizes machine learning techniques to analyze usage patterns in order to allow Windows Vista to make intelligent decisions about what content should be present in system memory at any given time.
As part of the complete redesign of the networking architecture, IPv6 has been fully incorporated into the operating system, and a number of performance improvements have been introduced, such as TCP window scaling. Prior versions of Windows typically needed third-party wireless networking software to work properly; this is no longer the case with Vista, as it includes more comprehensive wireless networking support.
For graphics, Vista introduces a new Windows Display Driver Model, as well as major revision to Direct3D. The new driver model facilitates the new Desktop Window Manager, which provides the tearing-free desktop and special effects that are the cornerstones of Windows Aero. Direct3D 10, developed in conjunction with major display driver manufacturers, is a new architecture with more advanced shader support, and allows the graphics processing unit to render more complex scenes without assistance from the CPU. It features improved load balancing between CPU and GPU and also optimizes data transfer between them.[13]
At the core of the operating system, many improvements have been made to the memory manager, process scheduler, heap manager, and I/O scheduler. A Kernel Transaction Manager has been implemented that gives applications the ability to work with the file system and registry using atomic transaction operations.
[edit] Security-related technologies
Main article: Security and safety features new to Windows Vista
Improved security was the primary design goal for Vista.[3] Microsofts Trustworthy Computing initiative, which aims to improve public trust in its products, has had a direct effect on the development of Vista. Security-related technologies include:
* User Account Control (UAC) is a new security technology that allows Windows to operate effectively as a "standard" user with fewer privileges. This was often a difficult thing to do in previous versions of Windows, because the previous "limited" user accounts proved too restrictive and incompatible with a large proportion of application software. When an action requiring administrative rights is requested, the user will first be prompted to confirm their action (or be asked for an administrator password if they are not themselves an administrator). UAC asks for credentials in a Secure Desktop mode, where the entire screen is blacked out and temporarily disabled, to present only the elevation UI. This is to prevent spoofing of the UI or the mouse by the application requesting elevation and for preventing application-based Shatter attacks. UAC also provides files and registry virtualization. IE7 Protected Mode relays on UAC.
* Integrity mechanism restrict write access to securable objects by lower integrity processes, much the same way that user account group membership restricts the rights of users to access sensitive system components.
* User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI) prevents processes from sending selected window messages, hook and attach to processes running with higher integrity.
* Windows Firewall with Advanced Security: Supports filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic. It's also possible to create advanced packet filter rules. Rules can be configured for services by its service name chosen by a list, without needing to specify the full path file name.
* Windows Defender: Microsoft's Anti-spyware product has been incorporated into Windows, offering protection against spyware and other threats. Changes to various system configuration settings (such as new auto-starting applications) are blocked unless the user gives consent. The new version uses Windows Automatic Updates to receive definition updates, also works properly with standard user accounts, and has integration with IE and Windows Mail so that downloads and mail attachments are scanned when they are downloaded, which reduces the risk of accidentally downloading malicious software.
* BitLocker Drive Encryption is a data protection feature that provides encryption for the entire OS volume that will only be included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista. Bitlocker can work in conjunction with a Trusted Platform Module chip that is on a computer's motherboard.[14]
* Windows Service Hardening prevents Windows Services from doing operations on file systems, registry or networks which they are not supposed to by automatically running each service in a separate user account, thereby preventing entry of malware by piggybacking on system services.
* Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) to prevent Return-to-libc buffer overflow attacks.
* Windows Filtering Platform enables software such as firewall products to perform activities such as packet inspection. Anti-virus software can also use the file system mini filter to participate in file system activities.
* Kernel Patch Protection protects the integrity of the kernel for the 64-bit version from malicious attacks and from inadvertent reliability problems that result from patching. This is not actually a new security feature in Windows Vista; it was first supported on the x64 (AMD64/EM64T) CPU architecture versions of Microsoft Windows including Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Kernel Patch Protection monitors if key resources used by the kernel or kernel code itself has been modified and will initiate a shut down of the system if unauthorized patches of certain data structures or code are detected. Kernel Patch Protection has been designed to protect against threats such as rootkits, although it cannot currently prevent attacks exploiting hardware-based virtualization;[15] this was demonstrated by the Blue pill.
* Code Integrity (CI) protects Windows Vista by verifying that system binaries havent been tampered with by malicious code and by ensuring that there are no unsigned drivers running in kernel mode on the system. CI starts as Windows starts up. The boot loader checks the integrity of the kernel, the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), and the boot-start drivers. After these binaries have been verified, the system starts and the memory manager calls CI to verify any binaries that are loaded into the kernels memory space. The binaries are verified by looking up their signatures in the system catalogs. Aside from the kernel memory space, CI verifies binaries loaded into a protected process and system installed dynamic libraries that implement core cryptographic functions.
* Internet Explorer 7's new security and safety features include a phishing filter, IDN with anti-spoofing technology, and better integration of system-wide parental controls. For added security, ActiveX controls are disabled by default. Also, Internet Explorer operates in a "protected mode" sandbox which operates with lower permissions than the user, preventing it from accessing or modifying anything besides the Temporary Internet Files directory.[16] Also, for better security, Internet Explorer is no longer integrated with the explorer shell (local files typed in IE are opened using the explorer shell and Web sites typed in the explorer shell are opened using the default web browser).
* Added new SSL and TLS extensions, which enable the support of both AES and new ECC cipher suites. The support for AES is not available in Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003.
[edit] Business technologies
While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities has been on the new user interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft is also adding new deployment and maintenance features to make a compelling case for businesses still running Windows NT, 2000, and XP desktops.
* The WIM image format (Windows IMage) is the cornerstone of Microsoft's new deployment and packaging system. WIM files, which contain an image of Windows Vista, can be maintained and patched without having to rebuild new images. Windows Images can be delivered via Systems Management Server or Business Desktop Deployment technologies. Images can be customized and configured with applications then deployed to corporate client personal computers using little to no touch by a system administrator. ImageX is the Microsoft tool used to create and customize images.
* Windows Deployment Services replaces Remote Installation Services for deploying Vista and prior versions of Windows.
* Approximately 800 new Group Policy settings have been added, covering most aspects of the new features in the operating system, as well as significantly expanding the configurability of wireless networks, removable storage devices, and user desktop experience.[17]
* Services for UNIX has been renamed "Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications", and is included with the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista. Network File System (NFS) client support is also included.
* Wireless Projector support
[edit] Developer technologies
Windows Vista includes a large number of new application programming interfaces. Chief among them is the inclusion of version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which consists of a class library and Common Language Runtime. Version 3.0 includes several new technologies:
Presentation
The Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF, formerly code-named Avalon: a new user interface subsystem and framework based on Direct3D (DirectX), and vector graphics, which will make use of 3D computer graphics hardware and Direct3D technologies. See Windows Graphics Foundation. It provides the foundation for building applications and blending together application UI, documents, and media content.
Communication
The Windows Communication Foundation or WCF, formerly code-named Indigo: a service-oriented messaging subsystem which will enable applications and systems to interoperate locally or remotely using Web services.
Workflow
The Windows Workflow Foundation or WF: was announced in August 2005, and allows task automation and integrated transactions using workflows. It is the programming model, engine and tools for building workflow enabled applications on Windows.
Identity
Windows CardSpace or WCS, formerly code-named InfoCard, is a software component which securely stores digital identities of a person, and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging into a website.[18]
These technologies will also be available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to facilitate their introduction to and usage by developers and end users.
There are also significant new development APIs in the core of the operating system, notably the completely re-architected audio, networking, print, and video interfaces, major changes to the security infrastructure, improvements to the deployment and installation of applications ("ClickOnce" and Windows Installer 4.0), new device driver development model ("Windows Driver Foundation"), Transactional NTFS, mobile computing API advancements (power management, Tablet PC Ink support, SideShow) and major updates to (or complete replacements of) many core subsystems such as Winlogon and CAPI.
There are some issues for software developers using some of the graphics APIs in Vista. Games or programs which are built on Vista's version of DirectX, 10, will not work on prior versions of Windows, as DirectX 10 is not backwards-compatible with DirectX 9.[19] According to a Microsoft blog, there are three choices for OpenGL implementation on Vista. An application can use the default implementation, which translates OpenGL calls into the Direct3D API and is frozen at OpenGL version 1.4, or an application can use an Installable Client Driver (ICD), which comes in two flavors: legacy and Vista-compatible. A legacy ICD, the kind already provided by independent hardware vendors targeting Windows XP, will disable the Desktop Window Manager, noticeably degrading user experience under Windows Aero. A Vista-compatible ICD takes advantage of a new API, and will be fully compatible with the Desktop Window Manager.[20] At least two primary vendors, ATI and NVIDIA, are expected to provide full Vista-compatible ICDs in the near future.[21]
