Features new to Windows Vista
Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, there are numerous features new to Windows Vista, covering most aspects of the operating system, which include additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.

Windows Shell and user interface

Windows Aero 

Windows Vista introduces a redesigned user interface and visual style named Windows Aero (a backronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open) that is intended to be aesthetically pleasing and cleaner than previous versions of Windows, with features such as glass translucencies, light effects, live thumbnails, and window animations enabled by the new Desktop Window Manager. Windows Aero also encompasses a new default typeface (Segoe UI)—set at a larger size than the default font of previous versions of Windows—new mouse cursors and new sounds, new dialog box, pop-up notification, and wizard interfaces, and revisions to the tone and phrasing of messages throughout the operating system. Windows Aero is available in the Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Windows Vista editions. 

All editions of Windows Vista include a new "Windows Vista Basic" theme with updated visuals; it is equivalent to Luna of Windows XP in that it does not rely on a compositing window manager. Glass translucencies, light effects, live thumbnails, or window animations of Windows Aero is not available. Windows Vista Home Basic additionally includes a unique "Windows Vista Standard" theme, which has the same hardware requirements of Windows Aero, but it does not include glass translucency or live thumbnail features or effects.

Start menu 

The Start menu has undergone a significant revision in Windows Vista, and it is updated in accordance with Windows Aero design principles, featuring glass translucencies and subtle light effects while Windows Aero is enabled. The user's profile photo is present above the right column, and hovering over an item in the right column replaces the user's profile photo with a dynamically changing icon to reflect the item that will be opened. The right column of the Start menu no longer shows icons for items, and the layout of items in this column has changed from Windows XP; the "Printers" and "Run..." commands are removed by default. "All Programs" is no longer a cascading listing of applications and folders; instead, applications and folders appear within a scrollable tree view list. The most significant change to the Start menu is the addition of a Start Search box that allows users to incrementally search for file names, file contents, and metadata, and which also functions as an application launcher. The power button now transitions to sleep mode by default.

Like Windows XP, Windows Vista also allows users to revert to the classic Start menu introduced in Windows 95.

Windows Explorer

Arrangement and visualization 
The leftward task pane interface in Windows Explorer of Windows XP has been replaced by an upward Command Bar that provides similar file operation commands (Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Delete, Rename and Properties) and additional options depending on whether a file is selected and its file type; the menu bar is hidden by default, but it can be displayed with the  key. A new leftward Navigation Pane hosts shortcuts. The address bar has been modified to present a breadcrumbs view, which shows the full path to the current location; clicking any location in the breadcrumb hierarchy navigates to that location, which eliminates the need to go back multiple times or up multiple directories—the Up button is removed accordingly. It is also possible to navigate to any subfolder of any parent folder of the current hierarchy by using the arrow between folders. When files are grouped, clicking the group header selects all items under that group. Multiple groups of files can also be selected by clicking the group headers while holding down .

File operations 
When copying or moving files, Windows Explorer displays the destination path and the source path, the number of items being transferred, and the transfer speed of items as megabytes per second (MB/s). Conflicts do not terminate file operations. If a conflict occurs with only one file, the user will be presented options for resolution. If a conflict occurs with multiple files, the user can apply a single resolution to every file to avoid conflicts with other files in the operation. If two or more files have the same name, for example, an option is available to rename the source file while retaining both the destination and the source files is available; in previous versions of Windows, the only options were to either replace the destination file or cancel the process. Rename operations for multiple files are facilitated with a new  keyboard shortcut that automatically brings the next downward file into focus after another file is renamed; pressing  and  together brings the next upward file into focus.

If an external data storage device is accidentally removed while copying or moving files to it, the user can retry the operation without restarting that file copy operation from the beginning; this gives the user an option to reconnect that external data storage device without data loss.

If a file is in use by another application during a deletion, move, or rename operation, Windows Explorer introduces a new IFileIsInUse API that allows developers to inform the user of the application that is using the file, with options to switch to that application to close it or to terminate that application's open handle on the file.

Icons 
Icons in Windows Vista are visually more realistic than illustrative. Icons are scalable in size up to 256 × 256 pixels. Required icon sizes are , , and ; optional sizes are , , , , and . Icons for documents show actual document contents to increase discoverability. New media overlays are available for audio track, photo, and video thumbnails, which are now distinguished by an overlay of the icon of the application assigned as the default for the respective file types. File icon viewing modes are Extra Large, Large, Medium, Small, List, Details, and Tiles. It is possible to transition between icon viewing modes with an incremental slider or by holding down the  key and scrolling with the mouse scroll wheel. To reduce the size of large icons, icons may be stored as compressed PNGs; to maintain backward compatibility with earlier versions of Windows, only larger sized icons can use lossless PNG.

Metadata and organization 
Windows Explorer in Windows Vista introduces significant changes from previous versions of Windows for organization and visualization of items. Column header controls are available in all icon viewing modes in Windows Explorer — not just Details view as in Windows XP and earlier — and provide enhanced filtering, grouping, and sorting capabilities. Windows Explorer also sorts files on-the-fly automatically as they are renamed or pasted. New organizational capabilities enabled by the Windows Search Index and platform include Stacks, which are collections of items assembled by a common property, and Saved Searches, which expose items to users based on metadata instead of folders or folder hierarchies; these features were originally intended to be provided by WinFS.

The new Details Pane allows users to add or change metadata such as Author or Title in items directly from within Windows Explorer without requiring them to open the application that created the item or to open a separate dialog box. Many more properties are exposed to the Windows Shell in Windows Vista than in Windows XP. For instance, it is now possible to query for photos based on types of camera flashes or whether a camera flash was used at all. Windows Vista includes inbox support for Microsoft Office documents and other types of items; support for metadata belonging to new types or other unrecognized types can be added by writing Property Handlers for the types. Unlike previous versions of Windows, all metadata is stored within items in Windows Vista to ensure that it is not lost when items are moved across machines or partitions or when sent as an attachment in a message.

Windows Search 

Windows Vista introduces a Windows Search (Instant Search) Index and incremental search platform that supersedes both the Indexing Service of previous Windows versions and Windows Desktop Search to unify platform search and to provide advanced enhanced customization capabilities and greater rapidity of results; it was developed after the postponement of WinFS and introduces features originally touted as benefits of that platform, such as content indexing, incremental searching, and property stacking. Windows Search appears in the Common Item Dialog (Open/Save dialog boxes), the Control Panel, the Start menu, in Explorer, and in various applications. Windows Search indexes user profiles (excluding AppData) and their associated content by default. Windows Search uses IFilters — the same interface used by Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint, and SQL Server — to extract, index, and scan file format contents; it similarly uses Property Handlers to read and modify item metadata. Applications such as Microsoft OneNote or Microsoft Outlook can utilize Windows Search for rapid retrieval of content in response to a user query.

Windows Search uses a query syntax referred to as the Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) featuring boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to disambiguate parameters and terms of queries for files, file contents, and metadata. An advanced search interface for building queries instead of using AQS is available. In Windows Vista, natural language search is available as an optional feature, enabling queries such as email from John sent this week or music by Mozart. Users can retain searches as Saved Searches for future use or to share them with other users; saved searches can also reuse other saved searches and update dynamically—when results of one search change, all referenced searches are updated. For non-indexed content, file, and metadata queries, Windows Search in Windows Vista uses the same IFilters otherwise used for indexing, which offers more consistent results between indexed and non-indexed searches, as well as the ability for non-indexed searches to discover contents and metadata that was otherwise unknown in previous versions of Windows.

With Windows Search, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 and later versions of OneNote can index audio from sound and video recordings in notebooks and return these results when queried. Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 also uses Windows Search to index content recognized by optical character recognition — documents, handwritten prose, photos, scans, and screenshots.

Windows Sidebar 

Windows Sidebar is an interface that hosts Microsoft Gadgets, which are small applications designed for a particular purpose. Windows Sidebar is positioned rightward on the desktop, though users can place it leftward or detach gadgets to the desktop. Windows Vista includes Calendar, Clock, Contacts, CPU Meter, Currency Conversion, Feed Headlines, Notes, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Stocks, and Weather gadgets. Microsoft hosted a Web gallery for users to download and install additional gadgets. 

Gadgets are written with a combination of DHTML, JScript, and VBScript, and are individually packaged as GADGET files. A single gadget on the Windows Sidebar can also optionally be hosted at Windows Live or on Windows SideShow devices.

Live File System (UDF Packet Writing) 
Windows Vista introduced native support for packet writing on optical media, using the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system. This feature, known as Live File System, makes writeable optical media act like flash storage by allowing users to incrementally add, modify, move and delete files on recordable and rewriteable optical media such as CD-R, CD-RW, DVD±R, DVD±RW, BD-R and BD-RE.

While the preceding Windows XP only supported reading UDF versions of up to 2.01 inside Windows Explorer, and relied on third-party software such as InCD for packet writing file operations, Windows Vista natively supports all UDF versions ranging up to UDF 2.60, used for BD-R. Live File System is supported with UDF version 1.50 and higher.

Default Programs 
A common issue in previous Windows versions was that competing applications doing common tasks each tried to associate themselves as the default for a certain file type using their own custom user interface. The default application information for a particular file type was stored in the registry on a per-machine basis, resulting in applications changing another user's default program when one user's defaults were changed and each application querying several different registry values when launched. In Windows Vista onwards, file type associations and protocol handlers can be set on a per-user basis using the new Default Programs API, meaning default programs for file types and tasks can be different for each individual user. There is an API for calling a common user interface so applications no longer need to maintain their own file association UI. The Default Programs API gives applications a programmatic way to check for and discover other default applications, restore a single or all registered defaults, query for the owner of a specific default file association/protocol, launch the Default Programs UI for a specific application or clear all per user associations. Applications only need to registered at install time to be part of Default Programs.

Windows Flip and Flip 3D 

Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise support Windows Flip, which displays a dynamic thumbnail of each open window—instead of an application icon for each window—on a Windows Aero glass surface and replaces the + interface of previous versions of Windows; and Windows Flip 3D, which enables users to flip through and a cascading stack of open windows by pressing +; releasing these keys selects the nearest application window. Users can retain Flip 3D after releasing the keyboard keys by pressing  in addition to  and . Pressing the  key will flip through the stack of open windows in reverse. Flip 3D can also be scrolled with the scroll wheel of a mouse.

Taskbar buttons in Windows Vista when Windows Aero is enabled also display a dynamic thumbnail of each window when the user hovers over them with the mouse cursor.

Windows Ultimate Extras 

Windows Ultimate Extras are optional features accessible from Windows Update in Windows Vista Ultimate, which include BitLocker and Windows Marketplace enhancements, games, Multilingual User Interface packages, Windows DreamScene dynamic wallpapers, and Windows sound schemes.

Other Shell improvements 
 Add to Quick Launch is a new context menu command for application shortcuts.
 AutoPlay supports Blu-ray, HD DVD, Super Video CD, and Video CD, and AutoPlay itself is now a per-device setting.
 Common Item Dialog supersedes the Common File Dialog of previous Windows versions, and introduces new features including + to select all of a filename and access to item metadata.
 Context menu commands to Copy as path for selected files and Open Command Prompt window here for selected folders are introduced; shortcuts also have a context menu option to open their the locations of their targets.
 Dialog boxes now display their status on the taskbar; only windows showed their status on the taskbar in previous versions of Windows.
 Disk Cleanup now includes handlers for cleaning setup logs, system error memory dumps, and Windows thumbnail caches.
 Games (also known as the Games Explorer) is a centralized location to access, manage, and view installed games.
 Improvements to the Windows C++ common and standard controls.
 JPEG files can be natively set as the desktop wallpaper without using Active Desktop (which is no longer supported); the aspect ratio of JPEG files is now is maintained properly when set as the desktop wallpaper.
 Shell overlay icons and sound events for User Account Control are available.
 Task Dialogs and associated APIs aim to address issues with older message boxes and intend to facilitate the creation of custom dialog boxes.
 The Date and Time applet has been rewritten in Windows Vista, allowing two more clocks to be displayed on the clock system icon of the taskbar, and can now display time from other time zones. Daylight saving time details are on the calendar, and users can browse specific days, months, or years.
 The Previous Versions Property Sheet Shell extension can restore all previous versions of a file by utilizing Shadow Copy, a storage backup technology introduced in Windows Server 2003.
 The Summary tab and the Version tab of Windows XP have been combined into a single Details tab; the new tab allows editing the same metadata as the Details Pane if a Property Handler for the selected file type is installed. A Remove Properties and Personal Information option removes extra metadata.

New and upgraded applications

Backup and Restore Center
Backup and Restore Center (also known as Backup Status and Configuration) replaces NTBackup and operates in two modes: (a) Backup or restore selected files or (b) Complete PC Backup. If using Complete PC Backup, incremental snapshots are stored on external hard disk or optical media, and the complete system can be restored to protect against hardware failure or severe software damage. Automatic scheduling of file backups is not available in Vista Home Basic. Complete PC Backup is not available in Vista Home Basic and Home Premium.

Games 
FreeCell, Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire of previous Windows versions are rewritten in DirectX to take advantage of Windows Vista's new graphical capabilities. InkBall from Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is also included, and has been updated to support being played with a mouse. New games include Chess Titans, Mahjong Titans, and Purble Place. Microsoft Tinker and Texas Hold 'Em Poker are available as Windows Ultimate Extras in Windows Vista Ultimate. All Windows Vista games support XInput, which allows them to be played with an Xbox 360 Controller. There additionally is intrinsic support for Xbox 360 controllers and peripherals in Windows Vista.

Internet Explorer 7 

Internet Explorer 7 adds support for tabbed browsing, Atom, RSS, internationalized domain names, a search box, a phishing filter, an anti-spoofing URL engine, fine-grained control over ActiveX add-ons, thumbnails of all open tabs in a single window (called Quick Tabs), page zoom, and tab groups. Tab groups make it possible to open a folder of Favorites in tabs with a single click. Importing bookmarks and cookies from other web browsers is also supported. Additionally, there is now proper support for PNG images with transparency as well as improvements and fixes to CSS and HTML rendering. The Windows RSS Platform offers native RSS support, with developer APIs.

On Windows Vista, Internet Explorer operates in a special "Protected Mode", which runs the browser in a security sandbox that has no access to the rest of the operating system or file system, except the Temporary Internet Files folder. This feature aims to mitigate problems whereby newly discovered flaws in the browser (or in ActiveX controls hosted inside it) allowed hackers to subversively install software on the user's computer (typically spyware). Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista also exclusively supports Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) key lengths up to 256 bits outlined in RFC 3268 and certificate revocation checking using Online Certificate Status Protocol. The TLS implementation has also been updated to support extensions as outlined in RFC 3546, most notable of which is Server Name Indication support.

Internet Explorer 7 additionally features an update to the WinInet API. The new version has better support for IPv6, and handles hexadecimal literals in the IPv6 address. It also includes better support for Gzip and deflate compression, so that communication with a web server can be compressed and thus will require less data to be transferred. Internet Explorer Protected Mode support in WinInet is exclusive to Windows Vista and later Windows versions.

Internet Information Services 7 

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 introduces a refactored, modular architecture with integrated .NET Framework extensibility; the new version includes a completely modular Web server engine with optional modules to offer specific features—instead of being a monolithic server that automatically includes all features. The administration interface additionally is rewritten and uses the Microsoft Management Console for asynchronous operation and other features, with ASP.NET configuration being more prominent. ISAPI extension development is deprecated in favor of APIs that enable the new module architecture. All Web server configuration information is stored in XML files instead of in the metabase. A global configuration file stores default settings of the server, with optional additions from Web document roots and subdirectories optionally augmenting or supplanting these. There are additional new features dedicated to backward compatibility, deployment, performance, and security.

Magnifier
Magnifier in Windows Vista can view vector drawings and text of Windows Presentation Foundation applications without blurring the magnified content—it performs resolution-independent zooming—when the Desktop Window Manager is enabled; the release of .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 in 2008 removes this capability when installed in Windows Vista.

There is a new interface feature for magifier docking options. Microsoft introduced the Magnification API for developers to apply color effects and magnify content with the release of Windows Vista.

Paint

Paint has been updated with a new set of colors in the color box, and an updated color box location—upward instead of download—to facilitate access to colors and options when editing photos. Users can now crop photos or undo a total of 10 consecutive actions instead of only 3 actions. The magnifier feature has been enhanced to allow users to incrementally zoom in or zoom out of a photo instead of zooming based on a percentage value.

Snipping Tool
Snipping Tool of Experience Pack for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 is included in Windows Vista as a screen-capture tool that allows taking screenshots (snips) of free-form areas, rectangular areas, and windows, which can be annotated, emailed, and saved.

Sound Recorder
Sound Recorder has been rewritten for Windows Vista and supports recording clips of any length and saving them as WMA, with options in the Common Item Dialog to modify and write metadata when saving recordings.

Windows Calendar
Windows Calendar is an integrated calendar application in Windows Vista that supports creating, managing, publishing, sharing, and subscribing to calendars across the Internet or network shares; the popular iCalendar format is among the calendar formats supported.

Windows Contacts
Windows Contacts replaces the Windows Address Book as a new unified contact and personal information management application; it stores contacts as CONTACT files based on XML and features extensibility APIs and options for integration with other applications and devices. Legacy WAB files and the CSV and VCF open standards are also supported.

Windows DVD Maker
Windows DVD Maker is a DVD creation application. Applications can also pass an XML file to DVD maker for authoring and burning.

Windows Fax and Scan
Windows Fax and Scan, available in the Business, Ultimate and Enterprise Windows Vista editions is a faxing and scanning application that supports sending and receiving faxes, faxing or emailing scanned documents, and forwarding faxes as email attachments. It replaces the optional Fax Services component of Windows XP. Users can preview documents before faxing them and directly fax or email documents after scanning.

Windows Mail
Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express, the email client of previous Windows versions. It incorporates a Phishing Filter like the one found in IE7 as well as Bayesian junk mail filtering which is updated monthly via Windows Update. Also, e-mail messages are now stored as individual files rather than in a binary database to reduce frequent corruption and make messages searchable in real-time. Backing up and restoring account setup information, configuration and mail store is now made easier. It does however omit some features of Outlook Express, such as identities and a "Block sender" for Usenet access. Windows Mail is replaced with Windows Live Mail.

Windows Media Center 

Windows Media Center in Windows Vista, available in the Home Premium and Ultimate editions, has been upgraded significantly, including a considerable overhaul of the user interface. Each button in the main menu, which contains sections such as "Music", "Videos", and "TV", gets encased in a box when selected, and for each selection, a submenu comes up, extending horizontally. When any of the options is selected, the entries for each are presented in a grid-like structure, with each item being identified by album art, if it is an audio file, or a thumbnail image if it is a picture, a video or a TV recording, and other related options, such as different views for the music collection if "Music" is selected, extend horizontally along the top of the grid. Similarly, other items are identified by suggestive artwork. The grid displaying the items is also extended horizontally, and the selected item is enlarged compared to the rest.
Other features of Windows Media Center include:
 Support for two dual-tuner cards
 Native DVD/MPEG-2 support
 Addition of Movies and DVD button which lists all the movies on the hard drive and DVD.
 Tasks button that provides access to jobs such as setting up and configuring a media center extender device.
 Any video playing is overlaid on the background of the user interface, if the UI is navigated while the video is still playing.
 Support for high-definition (HD) content, and CableCARD support.
 Uses the .NET 2.0 CLR

Windows Media Player 11 

Windows Media Player 11 features a revised interface. Media Library is now presented without the category trees which were prominent in the earlier versions. Rather, on selecting the category in the left pane, the contents appear on the right, in a graphical manner with thumbnails—a departure from textual presentation of information. Missing album art can be added directly to the placeholders in the Library itself (though the program re-renders all album art imported this way into 1:1 pixel ratio, 200x200 resolution JPEG images). Views for Music, Pictures, Video and Recorded TV are separate and can be chosen individually from the navigation bar. Entries for Pictures and Video show their thumbnails. Search has been upgraded to be much faster.

Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate Editions supports MMC-5 driver commands for the AACS content protection scheme, as well as the UDF file system which is required for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback. However, not all the codecs required for playback of HD DVD and Blu-ray video are included. VC-1 and the MPEG-2 video decoders, as well as the Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 audio decoder are included in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate Editions. H.264 video and other multichannel surround sound audio standards still require third party decoders.

Other features of Windows Media Player 11 include:
 Windows Media Format 11 Runtime: Updates the earlier Windows Media runtime to support low bitrate WMA Professional Audio and includes a VC-1 compliant WMV Advanced Profile codec. Support for ripping audio CDs to WAV and WMA 10 Pro formats is also added.
 Stacking: Stacking allows graphical viewing of how many albums exist in a specific category of music. The pile appears larger as the category contains more albums.
 Search improvements: Searches and displays results as characters are being entered, without waiting for Enter key to be hit. Results are refined based on further characters that are typed.
 Disc spanning: CD Burning now shows a graphical bar showing how much space will be used on the disc. It splits a burn list onto multiple discs in case the content does not fit on one disc.
 Global Status: Global status shows a broad overview of what the player is doing. The information presented include status information regarding buffering, ripping, burning and synchronization.
 Synchronization: Improved synchronization features for loading content onto PlaysForSure-compatible portable players. Windows Media Player 11 supports reverse-synchronization, by which media present on the portable device can be replicated back to the PC.
 Media Sharing: which allows one to share their Media library and make it accessible to other PCs running Windows Vista or later Windows versions, Xbox 360, or networked Media Receivers via UPnP. Content (Music, Pictures, Video) can be streamed to and from Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV enabled devices such as the PS3, Xbox 360, and Roku SoundBridge. This includes DRM protected PlaysForSure content.
 URGE: The new music store from Microsoft and MTV networks is integrated with the player. As of October 28, 2007, the URGE service was discontinued when it merged with Rhapsody; the link in Windows Media Player 11 remains but is no longer functional. In order to use Rhapsody, a separate download is required.

Certain features of Media Sharing in Windows Media Player 11 are only available in Windows Vista and later. For example, Windows Media Player 11 on Windows Vista can also connect to remote media libraries; this is not available in the Windows XP version.

Windows Meeting Space 
Windows Meeting Space is a peer-to-peer collaboration application, the replacement for NetMeeting. Users can share applications or their desktops with other users on the local network, or over the Internet. Distribution and collaborative editing of documents, as well as passing notes to other participants is supported. Windows Meeting Space automatically discovers other local users using People Near Me, a feature that uses WS-Discovery.

Windows Movie Maker 
Windows Movie Maker now supports Direct3D effects and transitions, editing and outputting HD video, importing recorded DVR-MS format videos, as well as burning output movies on a CD. Beginning with the Home Premium edition of Windows Vista, it can import HDV video from camcorders and output video to Windows DVD Maker for creating DVD-Video discs. New effects and transitions have been added. Movie Maker of Windows Vista requires GPU hardware acceleration, pixel shader, and WDDM hardware support; however, Movie Maker from Windows XP was released by Microsoft as a download for Windows Vista users whose computers cannot run the new version.

Windows Photo Gallery 

Windows Photo Gallery is a photo and video library management application consisting of a toolbar for photo commands, a navigation tree for dates, folders, ratings, and tags, and a control bar with options to change view modes, navigate between photos, rotate photos, start slide shows, and zoom photos; preview thumbnails appear when users hover over photos with the mouse cursor. Users can adjust color, exposure, saturation, temperature, and tint, crop or resize, lessen red-eye, rotate, print, rate, or tag photos. Users can view tagged photos by clicking dates, ratings, and tags in the navigation tree; pressing and holding the  while clicking multiple tags across metadata types enables advanced queries such as “all photos of either Steve or Frank, taken in July, with a rating of at least 3 stars.” Users can add tags to files by dragging photos to tags listed in the navigation tree, and tags themselves can also be arranged in a hierarchical tree structure. RAW photos are supported and users can view any format for which there is an installed Windows Imaging Component codec. The photo import process now relies on the Media Transport Protocol, which introduces capabilities such as importing photos from mobile phones or wireless cameras. 

Slideshows with fade, pan, and zoom transitions can be created and burnt to a DVD; additional effects are in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate. A Slide Show Screen Saver option can create screensavers based on photos with specific ratings or tags ("all four-star photos") with an option to exclude specific tags ("all four-star photos tagged beach, but not tagged private"). An Online Print Wizard enables users to order prints of photos over the Internet for delivery to an address by mail or for local pickup at a nearby store. The Photo Print Wizard now supports borderless prints, international photo sizes, larger paper sizes, and includes more templates than Windows XP.

WordPad 
WordPad now supports the Text Services Framework, on which Windows Speech Recognition is implemented, which allows users to dictate text into the application.

Security and safety features 

Microsoft announced a Trustworthy Computing initiative in 2002; Windows Vista was built with the underlying ethos of "secure by default, secure in deployment, secure by design" to make it a more secure operating system than its predecessors. All existing code was refactored and reviewed in an effort to improve security. Some of the most discussed and most significant introduced security features include Address Space Layout Randomization, BitLocker, Device Installation Control, Mandatory Integrity Control, Parental Controls, User Account Control, User Interface Privilege Isolation, and Windows Defender. Windows Firewall is significantly improved, with the new ability to block and filter outbound connections, as well as to provide granular configuration policies.

Management and administration 

Windows Vista introduces new features and technologies that aim to assist and facilitate system management. Some notable changes include a complete replacement for NTLDR; a rewritten Task Scheduler; enhanced Remote Desktop functionality including per-application sessions; and the Windows Imaging Format, a new image-based deployment format. There is also a range of new Group Policy settings for the new features.

Graphics

Desktop Window Manager 

The Desktop Window Manager is the new windowing system which handles the drawing of all content to the screen. Instead of windows drawing directly to the video card's memory buffers, contents are instead rendered to back-buffers (technically Direct3D surfaces), which are then arranged in the appropriate Z-order, then displayed to the user. This drawing method uses significantly more video memory than the traditional window-drawing method used in previous versions of Windows, which only required enough memory to contain the composite of all currently visible windows at any given time. With the entire contents of windows being stored in video memory, a user can move windows around the screen smoothly, without having "tearing" artifacts be visible while the operating system asks applications to redraw the newly visible parts of their windows. Other features new to Windows Vista such as live thumbnail window previews and Flip 3D are implemented through the DWM.

Users need to have a DirectX 9 capable video card to be able to use the Desktop Window Manager. Machines that can't use the DWM fall back to a "Basic" theme, and use screen drawing methods similar to Windows XP.

Desktop Window Manager is included in all editions of Windows Vista except the Starter edition.

DirectX 

Windows Vista includes Direct3D 10, which adds scheduling and memory virtualization capabilities to the Windows graphics subsystem, as well as support for unified pixel shaders, gemortry shaders, and vertex shaders. Significant is the elimination of "capability bits" of previous versions of Direct3D, which previously were used to indicate which features were active on the graphics hardware; instead, Direct3D 10 defines a minimum standard of hardware capabilities that must be supported for a system to be regarded as compatible with the new infrastructure. Microsoft's goal with this design was to create an environment for developers, designers, and gamers that would assure them that their input would be rendered exactly the same across all compatible graphics cards.

Direct3D 10 is able to display certain graphics up to eight times more quickly than Direct3D 9 because of the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) and incorporates Microsoft's High-Level Shader Language 4.0. However, Direct3D 10 is not backward compatible with previous versions; the same game will not be compatible with both Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 9 or earlier, which means that developers who wish to use Direct3D 10 and provide support for older versions of Windows would need to create separate versions of the same game in order to target both Windows Vista and earlier versions. Windows Vista does, however, contain a backward compatible implementation of Direct3D 9. Direct3D 10 functionality also requires the WDDM and new graphics hardware, which will allow the hardware to be pre-emptively multithreaded—to allow multiple threads to use the GPU in turns—and provide paging operations to graphics memory.

Direct3D 9 in Windows Vista is called Direct3D 9Ex and also uses the WDDM, which allows Direct3D applications to access new features available in Windows Vista including advanced gamma functions, cross-process shared surfaces, device removal management, managed graphics memory, prioritization of resources, and text anti-aliasing.

DirectX Video Acceleration 2.0 

Windows Vista introduces DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) 2.0 which enhances the implementation of the video pipeline and adds a host of other DDIs, including a Capture DDI for video capture. The DDIs it shares with DXVA 1.0 are also enhanced with support for hardware acceleration of more operations. Also, the DDI functions are directly available to callers and need not be mediated by the video renderer. As such, pipelines for simply decoding the media (without rendering) or post-processing and rendering (without decoding) can also be created; these features require support for the WDDM.

Windows Vista also introduces a new video renderer, available as both a Media Foundation component and a DirectShow filter, called the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR). EVR is designed to work with Desktop Window Manager.

DXVA 2.0 supports only Enhanced Video Renderer as the video renderer on Windows Vista. DXVA integrates with Media Foundation and allows DXVA pipelines to be exposed as Media Foundation Transforms (MFTs). Even decoder pipelines or post-processing pipelines can be exposed as MFTs, which can be used by the Media Foundation topology loader to create a full media playback pipeline. DXVA 1.0 is emulated using DXVA 2.0.

Imaging 

Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a new extensible imaging framework that allows applications supporting the framework to automatically get support of installed codecs for graphics file formats. Windows Presentation Foundation applications also automatically support the installed image codecs. Developers can write their own image codecs for their specific image file formats. Windows Vista ships with the BMP, GIF, HD Photo, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF codecs. Codecs for RAW image formats used generally by high-end digital cameras are also supported in this manner. Windows Explorer and Windows Photo Gallery are based on this new framework and can thus view and organize images in any format for which the necessary codecs are installed.

HD Photo (previously known as Windows Media Photo) is a new photographic still graphics file format that supports features such as high-dynamic-range imaging, lossy as well as lossless compression, up to 32-bpp fixed or floating point representation, transparency, RGB, CMYK and n-channel color spaces, Radiance RGBE, embedded ICC color profiles, multiple images per file and support for Exif and XMP metadata formats. It is the preferred image format for XPS documents.

Color management 

Windows Vista features Windows Color System (WCS), a platform for color management. Its goal is to obtain color consistency across various software and hardware including cameras, monitors, printers, and scanners. Different devices interpret the same colors differently, according to their software and hardware configurations. As a result, they must be properly calibrated to reproduce colors consistently across different devices. WCS aims to make this process of color calibration automatic and transparent, as an evolution of ICC Color Profiles.

Windows Color System is based on a completely new Color Infrastructure and Translation Engine (CITE). It is backed up by a new color processing pipeline that supports bit-depths more than 32 bits per pixel, multiple color channels (more than 3), alternative color spaces and high-dynamic-range coloring, using a technology named Kyuanos developed by Canon. The color processing pipeline allows device developers to add their own gamut mapping algorithm into the pipeline to customize the color response of the device. The new pipeline also uses floating point calculations to minimize round-off losses, which are inherent in integer processing. Once the color pipeline finishes processing the colors, the CITE engine applies a color transform according to a color profile, specific to a device to ensure the output color matches to what is expected.

WCS features explicit support for LCD as well as CRT monitors, projectors, printers, and other imaging devices and provides customized support for each. WCS uses color profiles according to the CIE Color Appearance Model recommendation (CIECAM02), defined using XML, to define how the color representation actually translates to a visible color. ICC V4 color profiles are also supported. Windows Photo Gallery and Photo Viewer, Windows Imaging Component, the HD Photo format, XPS print path and XPS documents all support color management.

Mobile computing 
Significant changes have been made for mobile computing with Windows Vista.

Pen features

Cursors and cursor feedback 
Windows Vista introduces a cursor scheme for pens, with a distinct pen cursor appearing at all times while users hover over the screen with a pen to show where a tap will be performed. There are pen cursors for tap, double tap, and hold operations that visually indicate a specific event: a subtle ring appears after a tap; two subtle rings appear after a double tap; and hold operations display a chord that will form a circle to show when users can release the pen to perform the equivalent of a secondary mouse button press. A circle appears on the screen when users press a pen button to inform them of a successful button press.

There is a handedness option that changes where context menus appear when users press and hold the pen. Right-handed users will see context menus to the left of tap; left-handed users will see context menus to the right of a tap.

Flicks and other gestures 
Flicks are gestures available throughout Windows Vista allowing users to stroke the pen in a certain direction to perform an action. Flicking upward and downward performs scrolling operations, while flicking leftward or rightward navigates back and forth. Flicks are exposed as two categories: Navigational (Back, Forward, Page Up, and Page Down) and Editing (Copy, Paste, Delete, Undo) and can be performed in the eight major compass directions or configured to perform custom actions.

Pen panning, which allows users to drag pages upward or downward with the push and pull of a pen is available in Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft Office 2007. Physics and weight are simulated, with the scrolling distance being proportional to the pressure of the pen; it is the first time inertia was added to a direct pointing device for scrolling.

Tablet PC Input Panel improvements 
The Tablet PC Input Panel of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is updated to support AutoComplete in address bars, contextual disambiguation, and handwriting personalization. Context determines the user's intent when writing: in an address bar, handwritten text is automatically identified as a URL, but the same text is identified as prose when written in a textbox. Password fields selected with the pen now display the On-Screen Keyboard instead of the Tablet PC Input Panel to prevent observers from seeing handwritten passwords. The recognizer can now identify and adapt to specific handwriting, with an optional Automatic Learning feature improving recognition accuracy on an ongoing basis through regular use; users can also manually correct characters, words, or submit handwritten ink samples, and a training interface allows users to practice with sentences. A concept called harvesting can adapt the recognition dictionary based on contexts and terminologies of input from users in particular occupational fields such as legal or medical. An optional data collection feature allows handwritten text samples to be sent to Microsoft to improve handwriting recognition. The Tablet PC Input Panel itself can now be resized, and it supports new scratch-out gestures, whereby users can scribble on a word or phrase to quickly delete it instead of just performing an erase gesture with the back of a pen.

Touch input 
There is intrinsic support for single touchscreen-based interaction in addition to support for active pens; its inclusion in Windows Vista is the first time intrinsic support is available to Windows. A new, optional touch pointer interface simulates a computer mouse by displaying a two-button computer mouse on the screen, which users can drag to move the mouse cursor or touch its buttons to perform primary or secondary mouse click operations, especially where targets are too small to comfortably touch with a finger. A panning hand feature of Internet Explorer 7 allows users to scroll webpages with a finger. Flick gestures available to pens can also be used with fingers.

Windows Explorer checkboxes 
Checkboxes appear alongside files in Windows Explorer on a tablet PC so that users can more easily select and manage files with a pen, which is useful especially on tablets without a keyboard where holding the  key or the  key to select multiple files is not possible. Checkbox targets in Windows Explorer also extend beyond the checkboxes themselves to facilitate the selection of multiple files with a pen.

External display improvements 
Windows Vista aims to simplify the detection, configuration, and installation of external displays by introducing a standardized setup procedure and interface with the new WDDM, enabling hot plug detection of external displays and alerting the new Transient Multimon Manager (TMM) for configuration and setup when an external display is connected. In previous versions of Windows, installation routines for displays varied due to hardware configurations such as function keys, specific manufacturer requirements, and manufacturer specific software interfaces. When possible, the TMM also saves user preferences for individual displays to improve mobility scenarios as these preferences can then be restored when the same display is reconnected at a different time or location. The improvements intend to enable a display connectivity experience that provides the ease of use of plug and play peripherals.

Windows Vista also includes window management improvements so that applications can respond to changing monitor environments. When a secondary display with an active window is disconnected, for example, open windows on the secondary display will be moved back to the primary display so that they remain visible.

Network Projection 
Windows Vista introduces a standardized setup procedure for the detection and connection of projectors. Networked projectors can be searched for automatically or users can manually enter addresses of the projectors to which Windows Vista should connect. Windows Vista automatically disables sleep mode and system notifications while a presentation is ongoing; users can manually adjust desktop background images, screensavers, and volume levels. Preferences can by saved to specific display configurations. Devices Profile for Web Services simplifies installation and management of networked devices. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 enhances network projection by temporarily resizing the desktop to accommodate custom projector resolutions.

Power management

Changes to power schemes 
Previous versions of Windows had at least six different power schemes. Windows Vista aims to simplify power management by presenting concise names for power schemes and by reducing the number of default schemes to the following three schemes: Balanced, which is enabled by default adjusts performance and power consumption based on user interaction; Power Saver, which reduces system performance by favoring energy efficiency—reduces display brightness, processor performance, screen dimming intervals, with the system entering sleep mode more often; and Maximum Performance, which favors performance regardless of user activity. 

Microsoft said these changes are a result of confusion caused by schemes in previous versions of Windows: power schemes were numerous, lacked discoverability, and included incomprehensible names that confused or intimidated users; they would select "Minimal Power Management" to conserve battery power consumption, for example, but this would instead maximize performance at the expense of battery life. Users can now create their own power schemes, and the system notification for power on the taskbar has also been updated in Windows Vista to provide single-click access to the new default schemes, with an option to change additional power settings.

Granular power option configuration options 

Windows Vista also introduces granular control over power scheme settings unavailable in previous versions of Windows: CPU cooling and state options, PCI Express link state power management settings, USB selective suspension options, wake timers, and wireless adapter power saving modes; USB selective suspension additionally is supported among a wider range of class drivers than in previous Windows versions, with support for Bluetooth classes, portable devices, and video classes. There are new power options for indexing files, playing video, and streaming media. Windows Vista SP1 introduces the ability for the operating system to turn off periodic VSync interrupt counting of CPU cycles when the screen is not being refreshed from new graphics or mouse activity, which can result in significant energy savings.

Sleep 
Sleep is the default power suspension state (instead of shut down) for desktop computers and mobile PCs such as laptops and it replaces the standby feature of previous versions of Windows. To ensure that sleep mode transitions are reliable, Windows Vista does not, by default, allow applications or drivers to veto the sleep process. Vetoing the sleep process, which prevents the operating system from idling to sleep or from responding to sleep requests by users was a significant source of power transition failures in previous versions of Windows and resulted in an eventual user distrust of power-saving capabilities due to decreased battery life, overheated systems, and potential data loss. Early in the development of Windows Vista Microsoft indicated it would still allow the operating system sleep process to be vetoed, but subsequent investigations revealed that this capability was frequently abused by application developers and it was disallowed. Administrators, however, can still enable veto functionality through group policy.

Hybrid Sleep 
Hybrid Sleep combines sleep mode and hibernation by saving memory contents to a hibernation file on disk and initiating sleep mode. If a system loses power in sleep mode, it will lose all data in memory, but with Hybrid Sleep, the system can still resume from the hibernation file, which offers improved resiliency in the event of power loss. It is enabled by default on desktop computers, which usually do not include an uninterruptible power supply, but it is disabled by default on laptops and other mobile devices as they typically include an additional power source such as a battery. Hybrid Sleep requires a WDDM driver.

Away Mode 
Windows Vista introduces Away Mode power management functionality that filters input devices, mutes audio, and turns off the display of a computer while allowing it to remain operational for background operations such as recording, sharing, or streaming media. Away Mode in Windows Vista allows a PC to be similar to a consumer electronics device. Microsoft emphasizes that it is not a replacement for sleep mode despite the power saving benefits it provides. Away Mode was previously released in  Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2; it was in development for Windows Vista when it was codenamed "Longhorn".

Windows HotStart 
Windows HotStart (formerly Windows Direct and also known as Direct Media Mode) enables opening an application during startup or resume in response to the press of a button or a wireless receiver event such as the press of a remote control. It provides instant on feature availability associated with mobile devices such as cell phones, and it enables what Microsoft describes as appliance-like availability—a PC that boots into a multimedia application, for example, functions as a DVD player. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMS) can customize HotStart hardware implementation and functionality. Users can customize HotStart through the Windows Registry; instead of launching a multimedia application a user can, for example, configure a button to launch an e-mail application. HotStart can result in power savings because it enables direct and immediate access to desired content.

Other mobility enhancements 
 Hybrid drives and other flash memory caches such as Intel Turbo Memory are supported with Windows ReadyDrive, which enables systems to boot up faster, conserve battery power consumption, and resume from hibernation more quickly.
 Ink Analysis APIs of the Windows Presentation Foundation intrinsically support handwriting and inking, and can recognize handwritten shapes and text, which are converted to vector-graphics rendered as the shape or text that was intended to be drawn. An update for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition containing Ink Analysis API support was released.
 InkBall, Sticky Notes, and Windows Journal from Windows XP Tablet PC Edition are included in Windows Vista.
 Media Transfer Protocol over USB or TCP/IP is supported. The Platform Update for Windows Vista introduces support over Bluetooth.
 Sync Center is a single location for creating or managing sync partnerships for Offline Files, mobile phones, PDAs, smart phones, and portable media players.
 Windows Mobility Center centralizes information and settings relevant to mobile computers including display brightness, power options, presentation settings, and sync settings. OEMs can add further capabilities to control their specific features.
 Windows Mobile Device Center centralizes management and synchronization of Windows Mobile devices, with options to sync appointments, contacts, email, notes, tasks, and other content such as photos. Outlook 2000 and Windows Mobile 2003 and later are supported.
 Windows SideShow enables viewing information such as appointments, RSS feeds, and sports results on an auxiliary display even when a PC is powered down. 
 Windows Portable Devices has been introduced to communicate with attached media and all portable devices. The Platform Update for Windows Vista backports several features introduced in Windows 7.
 WinUSB, a generic user-mode USB driver with client API for simple devices that are accessed by only one application at a time is native to Windows Vista.

New fonts 
Windows Vista includes new Western (Latin, Greek and Cyrillic) ClearType typefaces: Calibri (sans-serif), Cambria (serif), Candara (sans-serif), Consolas (monospaced), Constantia (serif), Corbel (sans-serif), Segoe UI, Segoe Script (script), and Segoe Print (casual). Additionally, four new Asian fonts have been added: Malgun Gothic (Korean), Meiryo (Japanese), Microsoft JhengHei (Traditional Chinese), and Microsoft YaHei (Simplified Chinese).

Language support 

Windows Vista is a language-independent operating system, unlike previous versions of Windows, and it supports additional languages when compared with previous versions. The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista allow additional languages to be installed with Multilingual User Interface. Users can now install and select non-English languages on a per-user basis—instead of a per-device basis—to transform the entire Shell and application user interfaces to that language. Unicode font and character support have also been improved. Windows Vista also supports "custom locales", allowing users to create their own locale data for use in applications using the Locale Builder tool.

See also 
 Windows Server 2008

References

External links 
 Archived list of ATI's Windows Vista capable GPUs that support the latest features of Windows Vista
 Archived list of NVIDIA's Windows Vista capable GPUs that support the latest features of Windows Vista

Windows Vista
Windows Vista