Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. However, Windows Vista also removed some features that originated in earlier versions of Windows and last seen in Windows XP.
Windows Shell and user interface
Windows Aero
Windows Vista introduces a new user experience based on a user interface and visual style called Windows Aero (a backronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open). Microsoft intended for Windows Aero to be aesthetically pleasing, and cleaner than interfaces in previous versions of Windows. Windows Aero introduces blurred, translucent glass window frames; dynamic light effects; dynamic taskbar thumbnail previews of open windows; and window animations facilitated by the new Desktop Window Manager. Moreover, Windows Aero encompasses new sets of cursors, fonts (the Segoe UI typeface), notifications, sounds, and wizards, as well as revisions to prose and tone of text used 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. Blurred glass translucencies, light effects, live thumbnails, and window animations of Windows Aero are not available with Windows Vista Basic. The Home Basic edition of Windows Vista additionally includes a unique Windows Vista Standard theme (having the same hardware requirements of Windows Aero) but Windows Vista Standard does not provide Windows Aero features such as blurred glass translucency or dynamic taskbar thumbnails.
Start menu
The Start menu has undergone a significant revision in Windows Vista, being updated in accordance with Windows Aero design principles, featuring blurred glass translucency and subtle light effects while Windows Aero is enabled. The current user's profile photo is present above the right column, and hovering over an item in the right column replaces the current 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 of Windows XP has been replaced by an upward Command Bar that provides the same contextual tasks and file operation commands. The Navigation Pane can now be enabled with these commands and tasks always available; in Windows XP, it was necessary to switch between the Navigation Pane and the Task Pane — both were not available simultaneously. The Navigation Pane itself has been updated to host optional Favorite Links. The menu bar is hidden by default, but it can be displayed with the key. 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. Groups of items can now be contracted and expanded, and group headings can be clicked on to select all items belonging in specific groups. Groups additionally now feature the number of items in each group. Multiple groups of files can also be selected by clicking each group header while holding down . Windows Explorer also sorts files on-the-fly automatically as they are renamed or pasted.
File operations When copying or moving files, Windows Explorer now 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) (in addition to displaying an estimated completion time and the names of files being transferred as previous versions of Windows did). Conflicts now do not terminate file operations. If a conflict occurs with only one file, the user will be presented with options for resolution. If a conflict occurs with multiple files, the user can either apply the resolution to every file to avoid conflicts with other files in the operation or to only a single file (if two or more files have the same name, for example, users can rename the source file and retain both the destination file and the source file; in previous versions of Windows, the only options were to either replace the destination file or cancel the operation). If an external data storage device is disconnected while files are being moved or copied, the user can retry the copy or move without restarting the same file operation from the very beginning; this gives the user an option to reconnect the external data storage device without loss of data.
Additionally, 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 of the application with an open handle on the file, which can provide users with options to close the application, switch to it to finish working on the file, or to terminate its open handle on the file.
If a user does not have permission to access an object, a new dialog box with an option to assign permissions appears (Click Continue to get access to this folder). If the user has been denied access to the object even after clicking Continue, a message with a hyperlink to the Security tab belonging to the corresponding object appears so that a user with the required permissions and privileges can change ownership of, and access to the object. In previous versions of Windows the user was only informed that access was denied, with no immediate, visible option for conflict resolution.
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 now display thumbnails depicting the actual contents of files. New media overlays are available for photo, track, 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.
In Windows XP icon view modes included Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, Details and, in folders with photographs, an additional Filmstrip view; these modes could be switched individually between by means of a View context menu option or a Views toolbar button. With Windows Vista icon view modes include Extra Large Icons, Medium Icons, Small Icons, List, Details, and Tiles. Moreover, a new View Control has been introduced that enables incremental zooming between icon sizes; over 60 icon sizes for items in the Shell are available through the new View Control.
Metadata and organization Windows Explorer in Windows Vista introduces significant changes from previous versions of Windows for the organization and visualization of items. Column header (property) controls are now available in all icon viewing modes in Windows Explorer (in Windows XP and earlier they were only available in Details view) and provide enhanced filtering, grouping, and sorting capabilities. New split buttons now appear next to column headers that, when clicked, display drop-down menus for column header properties for users to filter items by any property value of the selected column header. There were over 30 default properties by which to group or sort items in Windows XP. With Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced over 200 new properties for items, encompassing those for documents, photos, recorded television broadcasts, tracks, and videos; new properties are also introduced for attachments, contacts, and messages, which are kinds of items available in the Windows Shell for the first time in Windows Vista.
New organizational capabilities enabled by the Windows Search Index and platform include Stacks, which are collections of related items (depicted visually as a pile) assembled by a common property, and Saved Searches, which are built by specifying predicates on item properties, and separate the concept of organization from the concept of location; these features were originally intended to be provided by WinFS.
A new Details Pane allows users to add or change metadata of items (such as Author or Title) 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 built-in 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 copied to a CD-ROM, moved across machines or partitions, or sent as attachments in a message.
Sharing With Windows Vista, individual items can be shared; in previous versions of Microsoft Windows it was possible only to designate a folder as a share, set permissions on individual files and folders (which meant that users had to gather and organize all of the desired items in the folder), then share the entire folder. A Share button on the new Command Bar appears when selecting both files and folders in Windows Vista — in Windows XP, the equivalent command on the Task Pane appeared only while a folder was selected — and there is a new context menu option (Share...) to share files when a file is selected. Access based directory enumeration ensures that users only see the shared resources on a network they have permission to access; previously users could see, but not access items that were not explicitly shared with them.