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Windows Vista has many significant new features compared to previous Windows versions, covering almost every aspect of the operating system.

The full extent of the new features to be included in Vista has not been stated formally, so this is not a complete list.

Aero

Vista will include a re-designed user interface, code-named Aero – an acronym (or 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, which some report as being similar to Mac OS X. Until build 5112, little or nothing has been shown of Aero in public/leaked builds. However, Microsoft makes it clear that the changes are by no means superficial. The previous UIs were Plex, which was featured in Longhorn builds 3683-4029; Slate, which was featured in build 4051 and was available until build 4083; and Jade (build 4074 and 4083, actually an early preview of Aero). Microsoft started using Aero in public builds since build 5048. The first build with full-featured Aero was build 5219. Originally, Aero was to have three levels available, one code-named "To Go", which had the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) composition engine (previously known as DCE) disabled. The next was to be AeroExpress, lacking many features of the highest level code-named Aero Glass. However, in December 2005, Microsoft announced that there would only be two levels available, "Windows Vista Aero" and "Windows Vista Basic", with the previous "Express" level integrated into the new "Windows Vista Aero" level. A control panel was added to enable the user to fine tune this functionality, such as being able to turn off the "glass" translucency effect. These levels are provided so that the Aero interface (to some extent) can be used with a relatively low-end graphics card.

A variation of Aero, code-named "Aero Diamond", is slated to be the user interface for the Windows Vista Media Center experience.

Search

Vista will feature a search engine that will allow for instant display of results for a given search, in a manner similar to Google Desktop, Apple Computer's Spotlight, and Microsoft's Windows Desktop Search. This is in contrast to the search engine of Windows XP, which takes some time to display results, and only after the user has indicated that he has finished the search string. The Vista search will allow users to add multiple filters to continually refine search results (Such as "File contains the word 'example'"). There will also be saved searches that will act as virtual folders (rather like the Smart folders of Mac OS X v10.4, and Search Folders in Microsoft Outlook 2003), where opening a folder will execute a specific search automatically and display the results as a normal folder. These virtual folders are also distributable via RSS. Previously there were rumors that unlike Tiger's smart folders or Microsoft Outlook 2003, users will not be able to open the files directly from the virtual folder in the same way as through the Windows Explorer, this was later found to be untrue. The Vista search is built on an expanded and improved version of the Indexing Service from previous versions of Windows. Searching in Vista will also allow users to search across RSS and Atom feeds, straight from Explorer.

Also like Apple's Spotlight, programs specifically developed for Vista can also add search to their own programs. Vista will also use IFilters that are used today by Windows Desktop Search. The IFilter interface can be implemented by software makers so that files created by their applications can be better integrated with search and indexing programs.

The search functionality will be upgraded again when WinFS is released.

XML Paper Specification (XPS)

XPS was formerly known as "Metro", and is Microsoft's upcoming document format, which is based on XML. It is similar in many ways to Adobe Systems' PDF. XPS is intended to allow users to view, print, and archive files without the original program that created them. The name XPS also refers to one of the print paths in Windows Vista. With XPS, documents can remain in the same format from the time they are created to the time they are printed. Microsoft states that XPS will provide better fidelity to the original document by using a consistent format for both screen and print output.

While some suspect XPS is intended to be a "PDF-killer", Microsoft insists that they are not attempting to duplicate all the functionality of the PDF. For example, at the time of this writing, XPS is not planned to have the capabilities for dynamic documents.

XPS is a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation, allowing it to incorporate rich vector-graphic elements in documents. The elements used are taken to a lower level (i.e. described in terms of paths) to allow for portability across platforms. In effect, it consists of XAML files, with necessary fonts, zipped in a package.

Shell

The new shell is a significant change from previous versions of Windows. Combined with the new desktop searching feature, the shell gives users the ability to find and organize their files in new ways. Apart from the typical file organization practice of using folders to contain files, a new collection known as Lists lets users organize files from multiple locations in a single place.

A new type of folder known as a Shadow Folder has the ability to revert its entire contents to any arbitrary point in the past. Shadow Folders utilize a transactional storage feature in the newest NTFS release.

Additionally, the shell contains significant advancements in the visualization of files on a computer. Previous versions of the Windows Shell would display thumbnails to represent different files on the computer. In Windows Vista the thumbnail concept is taken further by overlaying different imagery to communicate more information about the particular file such as a picture frame around the thumbnail of an image file, or a filmstrip on a video file. Windows Vista helps the user identify the file easily by more intelligently generating the thumbnails. Using algorithmic analysis, images are cropped around their likely subject, and interesting key frames are automatically chosen from a video file. Also, the ability to zoom the thumbnails in the shell greatly increases their usefulness.

An interesting addition to the shell is "breadcrumbs view", meaning that as users navigate down a folder hierarchy, all the previous levels the user has gone through will be displayed near the title bar. The user can thus move quickly to a higher level and re-navigate from there, instead of repeatedly pressing the Back button. This is possible today by pressing the small down-arrow next to "Back" in folders and in Internet Explorer, but Windows Vista will put it front and center.

The usage of Ratings will also be expanded to all files, and not just video and music files within Windows Media Player as is currently the case.

Networking

Windows Vista is expected to have a brand new networking stack. A significant and much needed change is a more complete implementation of IPv6 which is now supported by all networking components, services, and the user interface. Vista also takes advantage of peer-to-peer technology to provide a new type of domain-like networking setup known as a Castle. Castle makes it possible for user credentials to propagate across networked computers without a centralized server, making them more suitable for a home network.

The ability to assist the user in diagnosing a network problem is expected to be a major new networking feature. Using technologies such as UPnP, Windows Vista has a greater awareness of the network topology the host computer is in. With this new network awareness technology it can provide help to the user in fixing network issues or simply provide a graphical view of the perceived network configuration. Since build 5231, there is also a new "Network Center", allowing the administration of the network topology.

Windows Defender

Apart from various improvements in security, Windows Vista will include Microsoft's anti-spyware utility, recently renamed Windows Defender. According to Microsoft, it was renamed from 'Windows Anti-Spyware' because it not only features scanning of the system for spyware, similar to other free products on the market, but also includes Real Time Security agents that monitor several common areas of Windows for changes which may be caused by spyware. It also includes the ability to easily remove ActiveX applications that are installed, and to delete the histories in almost all Microsoft programs, and a number of other common programs including Acrobat. Also included is a SpyNet™ network, that allows users to communicate with Microsoft, what they consider is spyware, and what are acceptable applications.

Parental Controls

Windows Vista includes a range of parental controls. An administrator can apply parental control restrictions to other users on the computer. Facilities include:

• Web content blocking, including the ability to limit web browsing to "kids websites", as well as blocking particular categories of content such as "Pornography", "Drugs", "Web e-mail", "Web chat", and so on. File downloads may also be disabled.
• Time limitations on when the account may be used
• Restrictions on what kind of games may be played. ESRB ratings are used to determine the highest allowed game rating. As with web content blocking, a number of categories of content may also be blocked regardless of ESRB rating.
• Restrictions on what programs may be executed
• Activity reports to monitor what was done under Parental Controls

Speech Recognition

Windows Vista includes a number of new features for speech recognition, allowing a user to control their machine through voice commands, as well as enable dictation.

PDC Vista Speech Demo from the Professional Developers Conference 2005 (link requires Internet Explorer)

Internet Explorer 7

Vista will include a new version of Internet Explorer, which adds support for tabbed browsing, RSS, 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, page zoom, and tab groups, which allow you to open multiple pages in tabs with a single click. Importing bookmarks and cookies from other web browsers will also be supported.

Internet Explorer will operate 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. 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).

Additionally, there will be a large number of improvements and fixes to CSS rendering.

Digital Rights Management

Microsoft is introducing a number of Digital Rights Management and content-protection features in Windows Vista, to help digital content providers, corporations, and end-users protect their data from being copied.

• PUMA: Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) is the new User Mode Audio (UMA) audio stack. It's aim is to provide a safer (for the content publishers, that is) environment for audio playback, as well as ensuring that the enabled audio outputs are consistent with what the publisher of the protected content allows.
• PVP-OPM Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management (PVP-OPM) is a new DRM technology that makes sure that the PC’s video outputs have the required protection and don't allow unauthorized copying of videos or that they are turned off if such protection is not available. Microsoft has introduced this new technology because otherwise the content industry may introduce robustness rules and testing that would effectively lock out PCs from premium content, by not allowing PCs a license key for the encryption used by conditional-access systems or HD-DVD. and Blu-Ray DVD.
• Rights Management Services (RMS) support, a component first introduced with Windows

Kernel and Core OS changes

• Full support for the "NX" (No-Execute) feature of processors. This feature, present as NX (EVP) in AMD's AMD64 processors and as XD (EDB) in Intel's processors, can flag certain parts of memory as containing data instead of executable code, which prevents overflow errors from resulting in arbitrary code execution. This should not be confused with trusted computing facilities provided by a so-called Trusted Platform Module.
• InfoCard, a user interface to the Identity Metasystem.
• Improved memory manager, processes scheduler and I/O with I/O asynchronous cancellation. Rewritten many kernel structure data and algorithms.
• Support for condition variables and reader-writer locks.
• Support for mandatory access control.
• All new audio stack and APIs's. Old audio code has been thrown away and rewritten by a team including Larry Osterman. Also, the audio stack runs at user level, making the operating system more stable.
• New security measures which prevent the kernel from being patched while running, except by authorized patches; this mitigates a common tactic used by rootkits to hide themselves from user-mode applications.
• Support for the PCI Express 1.1 specification.
• Full support for the Extensible Firmware Interface BIOS specification. (EFI was previously only available on Itanium versions of Windows XP and 2003)
• Improved ACPI support: full 2.0 specification, and better support for throttling power usage of individual devices.
• A new sleep state which combines Hibernation and Stand-By.
• Registry virtualization: Reads and writes in the HKLM\Software section of the Registry by user-mode applications while running as a standard user are "redirected", transparently storing the data with the user's account instead.
• The NTLDR boot loader has been replaced by a more flexible system called Boot Configuration Data.
• Peer-to-peer BITS file transfer support, known as "Neighbor Casting".

File Systems

• Transactional NTFS allows multiple file/folder operations to be treated as a single operation, so that a crash or power failure won't result in half-completed file writes.
• File encryption support superior to that available in Windows XP, which will make it easier and more automatic to prevent unauthorized viewing of files on stolen laptops or hard drives.
• A new file system called EXFAT, which is similar to the FAT filesystem, but is optimized for use with flash-style removable devices.
• Improvements to Universal Disk Format filesystem support; notably, the ability to format and write to UDF volumes, support for UDF 2.50, and longer volume label names.
• Support of UNIX-style symbolic links.
• File virtualization, a feature that automatically creates private copies of files that an application can use when it does not have permission to access the original files. This facilitates stronger file security and helps applications not written with security in mind to run under stronger restrictions.
• Volume Shadow Copy (read-only snapshots of a disk volume at an earlier point in time), fully supported on local volumes.
• A new file-based disk image format called Microsoft Windows Imaging Format (WIM), which can be mounted as a partition, or booted from. An associated tool called xImage provides facilities to create and maintain these image files.

Drivers

• A new user-mode driver model called the User Mode Device Framework, which is part of Microsoft's new driver model, Windows Driver Foundation. A user-mode driver would typically be used for devices which plug into a USB or Firewire bus, such as digital cameras, PDA's and mass storage devices.
• Kernel-mode drivers on x64-bit versions of Windows Vista must be digitally signed; even Administrators will not be able to install unsigned kernel-mode drivers. Installing user-mode drivers will still work without a digital signature.
• Driver packages that are used to install driver software will be copied in their entirety into a "Driver Store", which is a repository of driver packages. This ensures that drivers that need to be repaired or reinstalled won't need to ask for source media to get "fresh" files. The Driver Store can also be pre-loaded with drivers by an OEM or IT administrator to ensure that commonly used devices (e.g. external perhiperals shipped with a computer system, corporate printers) can be installed immediately, but don't need to be pre-installed.
• Support for Windows Error Reporting; information on an "unknown device" is reported to Microsoft when a driver cannot be found on the system, via Windows Update, or supplied by the user. OEM's can hook into this system to provide information that can be returned to the user, such as a formal statement of non-support of a device for Vista, or a link to a web site with support information, drivers, etc.

Other features and changes

• Six new Latin fonts: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas (monotype), Constantia, Corbel, and Segoe (previously used in Microsoft Office and Windows XP Media Center Edition); and one new Japanese font called Meiryo, supporting the new and modified characters of the JIS X 0213:2004 standard..
• Built-in DVD recording capabilities, including Mt. Rainier support.
• Native raw image support (a variety of formats used by professional digital cameras).
• Native, embedded RSS support, with developer API.
• The "My" prefixes have been dropped, so "My Documents" will just be "Documents", "My Computer" will just be "Computer", etc.
• Microsoft Sam will be replaced with the new voice Microsoft Anna.
• The long "Documents and Settings" folder is now just "Users".
• Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a built in benchmarking tool which analyzes the different subsystems (graphics, memory, etc), and uses the results to allow for comparison to other Vista systems, and for software optimizations. The optimizations can be made by both Windows and third-party software. Tom's Hardware Overview
• Windows Backup (code-named SafeDocs) allowing automatic backup of files, recovery of specific files and folders, recovery of specific file types, or recovery all files.
• Windows Flip 3D: Windows can be stacked and rotated in 3D to provide views of all of them simultaneously (Windows Vista: The Features)
• Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express, the well-known email client in previous Windows versions. It incorporates several user interface features from Outlook 2003, as well as Junk Mail filtering which is enhanced through regular updates via Windows Update.
• Windows Calendar is the new calendar application that is included in Windows Vista. It supports sharing of calendars on WebDAV-enabled web servers.
• Windows Photo Gallery, a photo & 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, presumed to be a DVD creation application.
• Windows Collaboration is the replacement for NetMeeting. Users can share applications (or their entire desktop) with other users on the local network, or over the Internet. Connections between local users is done through "People Near Me", a technology that uses WS-Discovery to see other users on a local network.
• A revised Windows Update that runs completely as a control panel application, not as a web site as in prior versions of Windows.
• New tools under Computer Management to allow a user to visually monitor CPU, disk, network, and memory activity over a period of time, including exactly which applications are consuming these resources.
• Significantly upgraded support for printer management.
• The Events facility has been completely rewritten around XML, and allows applications to more precisely log events.
• Windows Firewall has been upgraded to support outbound packet filtering and full IPv6 support.
• New support for infrared receivers; digital cameras and other devices supporting infrared can transfer files to a Vista PC with no additional software.
• Major upgrade to Remote Desktop Protocol, incorporating support for application-level remoting, improved security (TLS 1.0), support for connections via an SSL gateway, improved remoting of devices, and support for Avalon/WinFX remoting.

Related Links

• A summary with 15 videos: Why do I need Vista?

• Microsoft Windows