Technical Features New To Windows Vista - Other Features and Changes

Other Features and Changes

• Support for Unicode 5.0

• A number of new fonts:
  • Latin fonts: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas (monotype), Constantia, and Corbel. Segoe UI, previously used in Windows XP Media Center Edition, is also included, despite licensing issues with Linotype.
  • Meiryo, supporting the new and modified characters of the JIS X 0213:2004 standard
  • Non-Latin fonts: Microsoft JhengHei (Chinese Traditional), Microsoft YaHei (Chinese Simplified), Majalla UI (Arabic), Gisha (Hebrew), Leelawadee (Thai) and Malgun Gothic (Korean).
  • Support for Adobe CFF/Type2 fonts, which provides support for contextual and discretionary ligatures.
• When accessing files with the ANSI character set, if the total path length is more than the maximum allowed 260 characters, Windows Vista automatically uses the alternate short names (which has a 8.3 limit) to shorten the total path length. In Unicode mode, this is not done as the maximum allowed length is 32,000.
• The long "Documents and Settings" folder is now just "Users", although a symbolic link called "Documents and Settings" is kept for compatibility. The paths of several special folders under the user profile have changed.
• New support for infrared receivers and Bluetooth 2.0 wireless standards; devices supporting these can transfer files and sync data wirelessly to a Windows Vista computer with no additional software.
• A non-administrator user can share only the folders under his user profile. In addition, all users have a Public folder which is shared, though an administrator can override this.
• Network Projection is used to detect and use network-connected projectors. It can be used to display a presentation, or share a presentation with the machine which hosts the projector. Users can do this over a network so multiple sources can be connected at different times without having to keep moving the sources or projectors around. The network projector can be connected to the network via wireless or cable (LAN) technology to make it even more flexible. Users can not only connect to the network projector remotely but can also remotely configure it.
• New monitor configuration APIs make it possible to adjust the monitor's display area, save and restore display settings, calibrate color and use vendor-specific monitor features. Overall too, Windows Vista is designed to be more resolution-independent than its predecessors, with a particular focus on higher resolutions and high DPI displays . Windows Presentation Foundation and WPF applications are fully resolution-independent. Also, Transient Multimon Manager, a new feature that uses the monitor's EDID enables automatic detection, setup and proper configuration of additional or multiple displays as they are attached and removed, on the fly. The settings are saved on a per-display basis when possible, so that users can move among multiple displays with no manual configuration.
• Windows Vista includes a WSD-WIA class driver that enables all devices compliant with Microsoft's Web Services for Scanner (WS-Scan) protocol to work with WIA without any additional driver or software.
• The Fax service and model are fully account-based. Fax-aware applications such as Windows Fax and Scan can send multiple documents in a single fax submission. The Fax Service API generates TIFF files for each document and merges them into a single TIFF file. Users can right-click a document in Windows Explorer and select Send to Fax Recipient.
• Windows Vista introduces the 'Assistance Platform' based on MAML. Help and Support is intended to be more meaningful and clear. Guided Help, or Active Content Wizard is an automated tutorial and self-help system available with the release of Windows Vista where a series of animated steps show users how to complete a particular task. It highlights only the options and the parts of screen that are relevant to the task and darkening the rest of the screen. A separate file format is used for ACW help files. The guided help SDK got replaced in Windows 7 with the Windows Troubleshooting Platform.
• All standard text editing controls and all versions of the 'RichEdit' control now support the Text Services Framework. Also, all Tablet/Ink API applications and all HTML applications which use Internet Explorer's Trident layout engine support the Text Services Framework.
• Windows Data Access Components (Windows DAC) replace MDAC 2.81 which shipped with Windows XP Service Pack 2.
• DFS Replication, the successor to File Replication Service, is a state-based replication engine for file replication among DFS shares, which supports replication scheduling and bandwidth throttling. It uses Remote Differential Compression to detect and replicate only the change to files, rather than replicating entire files, if changed. DFS-R is also included with Windows Server 2003 R2.
• As with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, in Windows Vista x64, old 16-bit Windows programs are not supported. If 16-bit software needs to be run in 64-bit Windows Vista, virtualization can be used for running a 32-bit operating system.