Windows Desktop Update - Key Features

Key Features

  • Active Desktop - Enables the display of Internet Explorer renderable web content (e.g. HTML, XML, CDF) and for the first time the displaying of non-BMP image content on the Windows Desktop
  • Channels - Push Technology with some similarities to RSS and IE 8's WebSlices. Channels are an XML scripted remote delivery service over http using the .cdf file format. Internet Explorer 4.0 installs of the Desktop Update included localised content and service providers for the main language regions. Installations against IE 5.0 and higher lacked any default subscription content.
  • Quick Launch - The quick launch bar first appeared with the Desktop Update, providing a horizontal alternative to Microsoft Office 95/97/2000's vertical launch bar
  • Web folders - A WebDAV client integrated into Explorer windows which could display web content and graphics, providing a richer Windows Explorer experience
  • Folder Customisation - Individual folders and groups of folders could be customised in appearance using web like formatting constraints
  • Larger toolbar buttons with text labels in Windows Explorer
  • Improved Start menu, including a new 'Favorites' section, more options on the 'Find' menu and menu item drag and drop, edit and delete support
  • Support for displaying thumbnail image previews in Windows Explorer and infotips/tooltips for files and folders stored as comments in Desktop.ini.

Read more about this topic:  Windows Desktop Update

Famous quotes containing the words key and/or features:

    “The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
    —Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)

    “The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
    —Marcel Proust (1871–1922)