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Vista: Under the skin
Is Vista’s suave new interface and menu system window dressing or a radical improvement in usability?
While XP employs cartoon colour schemes and cloying canine search assistants to appear approachable and friendly, Vista takes an altogether more sophisticated approach. It’s not just the pretty graphics and new icons that have changed either, with new ways of finding and managing files, configuring your PC and keeping you informed about what’s happening. Transparency is the order of the day, in some cases, quite literally.
The interface has been thoroughly revamped, with everything from the control panel to file dialogs being upgraded to make them more accessible. There are fewer multistep wizards, and entirely new interfaces have been added to make more complex areas - such as networking - easier to understand, but it’s the visual and organisational changes that will have the most day-to-day impact.
Aero & Windows Basic
Alongside a new graphics driver model that promises greater stability and an end to visual glitches, Vista brings in a new, more powerful graphics engine, known as the Windows Presentation Foundation. It’s a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that take advantage of the power harnessed in today’s graphics cards.
Depending on how powerful your card is (see here for what you'll really need), you’ll end up with the option of one of two experiences in Windows itself - Windows Vista Basic, or the premium Windows Aero.
The most obvious change under Aero is the much-hyped glass look on windows, and the taskbar. This comprises not just the see-through title bars and borders, but a host of subtle lighting effects. The idea is to provide a more lightweight environment that interferes as little as possible with the task at hand. In terms of where your attention is drawn when working in an application, it’s largely successful.
You also get live previews of open windows when you hover over minimised windows in the taskbar - particularly handy for checking on file progress. Aero also brings a much-needed replacement for the task switcher, using live thumbnails of applications to make identification much easier. There’s also a big eye-candy hit in the form of Windows Flip 3D (accessed via the Windows key and Tab), which spins all the open windows askance, and allows you to scroll through them in a pseudo 3D environment. Even once the novelty wears off, it does occasionally prove useful.
The Windows Basic scheme ditches the glass effects, glowing buttons and live previews and, if you so wish, you can go even further and revert entirely to a Windows 2000 appearance. While Aero adds a fair amount to the experience, those with older systems shouldn’t lose sleep if their systems won’t cope with it - it’s far from all that Vista offers.
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| Windows basic mode drops the glass effects. |
Explorer
In keeping with the more grown-up approach, the farcical My Computer naming convention of Windows XP has been dumped. The folders have been reorganised too: rather than everything being crammed untidily in to My Documents, a root folder named after your user account contains discrete folders for Favorites, Contacts, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Video - plus folders for Saved Games. Besides being more logical, it’s also good news for simplifying a backup strategy, just as long as you’re reasonably organised.
Explorer windows themselves are very different too. By default, the left side holds a navigation pane or Favorite links list (also common to file dialogs), which can be edited as you see fit. Underneath that, there’s a button to bring up the old-style folder tree should you want it. The bottom holds the Preview pane, performing the same function as right-clicking to see a file or folder’s properties although, frustratingly, it doesn’t show the size of selected folders.
The big, friendly navigation buttons of XP have been replaced with a context-sensitive command bar running along the top, similar to XP’s common tasks pane, but the menu bar has completely gone, only appearing when the Alt key is pressed. Also gone is the Up button, leaving just Back and Forward buttons. Folder navigation now uses a breadcrumb trail, allowing you to skip to any part of the file path in a single click, with the Favorite links at its root. Take the time to customise that and it’s a tremendous timesaver.
Seeing what your files contain is much more straightforward; as well as the Preview pane, all icons are now treated as thumbnails, including those on the Desktop. Vista still offers XP’s tile, icon, list and detail views, but you can now resize icons through a wide range of sizes, and live thumbnails are used wherever possible.
The truth about Windows Vista
Under the skin
Security and encryption
Networking, IPv6 and beyond
Out of the box
Versions and requirements
What Vista might have been
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