Chapter One
What's New in Windows Vista IN THIS CHAPTER
A new look and feel
Quicker, easier navigation
Built-in security and parental controls
A better Internet experience
And so much more
Welcome to Vista! This chapter is for people who have experience with Windows XP or other versions of Windows and just want to know what's new. If you're new to PCs, this chapter won't help much because everything will be new to you. So feel free to skip this chapter and head over to Chapter 2 if you're not a long-time Windows user.
For the folks who do stick around here, the first thing you need to understand is that Windows Vista is more than just a new "version" of Windows. It's not just Windows XP with eye candy. It's a whole new operating system, inside and out.
But that doesn't mean you have to throw away all your existing hard-earned knowledge. In fact, you don't have to throw away any of that, because the old familiar ways of doing things still apply. You just have to be ready to expand your horizons to bigger and better things.
If you're like most people (myself included), your first inclination might be to get out of Vista as quickly as possible and return to a more familiar environment, like Windows XP. But if you do that, you'll be missing out on many new features and improvements. If you invest a little time in learning what's new and different, you'll find that you really can get things done more quickly and easily in Vista. This chapter provides a quick overview of what's new, so you can decide for yourself which features are most relevant to how you use your computer.
NEW FEATURE The new Aero Glass interface provides a more intuitive interface that better reflects how things are stacked up on your desktop.
A New Look and Feel
The most obvious (though certainly not the most important) new feature is the Aero Glass interface. Windows users have been using a 3D interface for years. You can open as many programs as you want, and they stack up like sheets of paper on a desktop. It just wasn't very obvious that you were using a 3D interface with items stacked up on your desktop.
Aero Glass changes that by making the borders around program windows semitransparent, so you can see when there's something behind whatever you're looking at. Aero also adds a little drop-shadow around the window border to make it look more raised. Figure 1.1 shows a small example. But it's much more noticeable on the actual screen.
Flip 3D
Along with the 3D appearance of Aero Glass comes a new way to take a quick look at all your open program windows. The old ways of doing things still work. For example, you can click the Show Desktop button in the Quick Launch toolbar to minimize all open program windows. You can still use the Alt+Tab shortcut key to switch between open programs. For the new alternative method, press [??]+Tab or click the Switch Between Windows button in the Quick Launch toolbar. Either way, all your open windows arrange themselves as in Figure 1.2.
When displayed in 3D, you can cycle through the open windows by spinning your mouse wheel or by pressing the [up arrow] and [down arrow] keys. Click any visible portion of a window to bring it to the top of the stack.
TIP If your prior experience with Windows doesn't include a concept or term from this chapter, you can fill in the gap by reading Chapter 2.
Of course, you can still use the taskbar to bring any open program window to the top of the stack. Vista's taskbar is better than the old ones. As you point to each button, you see a thumbnail of the program window it represents (see Figure 1.3). That makes it really easy to find exactly the program for which you're looking. Pressing Alt+Tab displays thumbnails, which is a lot better than seeing only icons! And that works even if you don't have Aero Glass.
Why don't I have Aero Glass?
Aero Glass isn't available on all computers because it requires some heavy-duty graphics processing. More specifically, you need a graphics card that supports the Windows Display Driver Modem (WDDM). If your computer doesn't have the necessary graphics hardware, you won't get the semitransparent look, the drop-shadows, or the Flip 3D option. But other than that, the rest will look and act roughly the same. For example, the window in Figure 1.4 is displayed with Aero Glass turned off.
What if I don't like Aero Glass?
If you have Aero Glass but don't like it, there are many things you can do to change its appearance. If you have Aero Glass, you can turn it on or off by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F9. Or, if you just want to tweak colors and transparency in Aero Glass, click the Window Color and Appearance in the Personalize window.
If you want an even more classic view of things, click Theme in the Personalize window. Then choose Windows Classic and click OK. (The Ctrl+Shift+F9 trick won't work in the Classic view. You'll have to choose the Windows Vista theme in the Theme dialog box and click OK before pressing Shift+Ctrl+F9 will work again.)
NOTE For more information on personalizing Windows Vista, see Part III.
NEW FEATURE Sidebar sets aside a portion of your desktop for live Internet data and other tools you might use often.
Windows Sidebar
Windows Sidebar lets you place gadgets on your desktop. Many gadgets hook into Internet services to keep you informed in real time. For example, there are gadgets for watching the weather, watching stock prices, and keeping up with headlines from your subscribed RSS feeds. Figure 1.5 shows the sidebar at the right side of the screen with a clock up top. The window in the middle is the Gadget Gallery from which you can choose the gadgets you want to use. You might have different gadgets. Not to worry. There are plenty of gadgets online that you can download for free.
If the sidebar gets in your way, you can put it into hiding until you need it. Or, you can turn it off completely and forget it even exists - whatever works for you. See Chapter 11 for the full lowdown on Windows Sidebar.
NEW FEATURE Vista's Windows Explorer provides many new ways of viewing and navigating through folders.
Quicker, Easier Navigation
Hard disk space is cheap these days, so everyone has a ton of it. Many people have thousands of files stored in all the space, organized into many folders and subfolders. Navigating up and down through folders all the time gets old. Vista has quite a few new tricks up its sleeve to help with that.
Probably the most important trick is the breadcrumb trail (also called an eyebrow menu) in the Address bar at the top of every folder. Some of you may recognize the concept from Web sites that offer similar navigation. In Vista's eyebrow menu, you can click the name of any folder you see in the trail to go to that folder. But there's much more to it than that. You can also click the arrow that appears next to any item in the trail to see other items at that same level in the folder hierarchy, like in Figure 1.6.
The eyebrow menu is worth its weight in gold. But it's not the only improvement. There's an optional navigation pane at the left side of every folder that contains quick links to common places. The links you see under Favorite Links are just examples. You can put links to any folders you like in there, and remove them just as easily. So you can constantly customize to reflect the folder you're using most.
The trusty Folders list is still available, too. You might not see it at first. To bring it up, just click the arrow next to Folders at the bottom of the navigation pane.
Sizing icons
You're not limited to discrete views of icons anymore either. In any folder, clicking the arrow next to Views in the toolbar takes you to a slider where you can choose a view and also adjust the size of icons. If your mouse has a wheel, hold down the Ctrl key while spinning the mouse wheel to adjust the icon size to your liking.
Vista gives you more control over the size of desktop icons too. Right-click an empty portion of the desktop and choose View, then an icon size. Or, if your mouse has a wheel, click an empty portion of the desktop. Then hold down the Ctrl key as you spin your mouse wheel.
Sorting, grouping, and stacking
Across the top of every folder you'll see column headings. You can sort, group, search, filter, or stack items by any column heading. Just point to any column heading and click the arrow like the example in Figure 1.7.
If you want to sort, group, filter, or stack icons by something that's not in the column headings, no problem. Just right-click any column heading and add whatever column headings you need.
So what's a stack, you ask? Well, it's kind of like a stack of paper and kind of like a folder. It looks like a stack of paper, like the icons in Figure 1.7, but opens like a folder. When you open the stack, you see everything inside the stack. See Chapters 28 and 29 for the full story on all the cool things you can do in folders.
Previous versions and undelete
Have you ever made a mess of a file while editing it? Then you close the file, and out of habit choose Yes when asked if you want to save your changes? Thereby replacing your good copy with the one you just ruined! If that happens in Vista, it may not be a problem. Right-click the file's icon and choose Restore previous versions. The file's Properties sheet opens to the Previous Versions tab as in Figure 1.8. Then click the version you want to restore.
Have you ever accidentally deleted a file and emptied the Recycle Bin, making it impossible to recover the file? You can get those back in Vista, too. The trick is in knowing how. See "Using System Protection" in Chapter 33 for all the secrets.
NEW FEATURE If you have thousands of files and messages to manage, the new Search feature will greatly reduce the amount of time you spend finding and getting to things you use most often.
Search and Virtual Folders
The new navigation tools really help make it quicker and easier to get around. But when it comes to getting around quickly and easily, no navigation is better than improved navigation. That's what Search and Virtual Folders (saved searches) are all about. To understand these features, you first have to erase from your mind any thought of "looking for lost items" or the Windows XP Search Companion. That's not what Search is about in Vista.
In its simplest form, Search starts right at the bottom of the Start menu. If you know the name of a program or Control Panel applet you want to open, or some keyword associated with a document, person in your Contacts folder, or Windows Mail message, you don't have to navigate at all to get to the item. Instead, open the Start menu by clicking the Start button or by pressing [??] or Ctrl+Esc. Then just start typing your search word. As you type, the Start menu shows items that contain the characters you are typing (see Figure 1.9). When you see the item you want, just click it.
Search for tags (keywords)
The Start menu search is handy. But there's much more. Searching in Vista goes way beyond looking for lost files. You can search all your documents for "relevance" or "meaning" rather than just by filename. The searches are much quicker than in earlier versions because Vista's search doesn't slog through the whole file system every time you search. Instead it searches an internal index of filenames, file properties (tags and metadata), and document contents.
If you've used Media Player, you've already had a sense of how that works. In Media Player you can click a genre like Classical, and see all your Classical songs, no matter who the artist or what folder the songs are stored in. Likewise, you could click Artist and see all songs by a given artist, regardless of what folder each song is in. Windows Vista extends that capability from Media Player to all the files on your hard disk. And any external hard disks you have, too.
Searches in Vista don't slog through the whole file system looking at tens of thousands of irrelevant files along the way. That's too slow and tedious. Instead, Windows Vista searches through a search index. The index contains filenames, tags (keywords), and even the contents of messages and files. So when you search for something like "catwalk" you get all files that have that in the filename, tag, or even inside the document. And you get it much more quickly than you would in XP.
TIP If you're familiar with online search engines like Google, then the best way to think of the new search feature is as a search engine for files and folders on your own computer. Because that's what it really is.
You can launch a search the old-fashioned way, by clicking the Start button and choosing Search. Use the Advanced Search options shown in Figure 1.10. Use the Location option to choose where you want to search. Use the other boxes to search by date, size, filename, tags, or other file properties.
You can also launch a search from the Search box at the top-right corner of any folder. But you have to be aware that those searches include only the current folder and its subfolders. Nonetheless, it's very powerful and useful because you're not limited to searching for filenames and wildcards. You can include specific file properties in your search criteria. For example, a search for genre: rock finds all files that have Rock in the genre property. A search for to:hobart finds all Windows Mail messages addressed to Hobart. A search for subject:vista finds all files that have Vista in the Subject property. The possibilities are endless.
To take full advantage of the new search capabilities, you have to invest a little time in learning how searches really work. If you just try a few searches and give up, you'll never truly appreciate all that the new search index has to offer.
Saved searches (virtual folders)
You can save the results of any search you perform as a virtual folder. A virtual folder acts like a real folder. When you open it, you see the files it contains as icons. To see examples of virtual folders, click the Start button, click your user name on the Start menu, and open your Searches folder. Figure 1.11 shows icons for some sample saved searches (virtual folders).
The virtual folders in your Searches folder are just examples. You're not stuck with just using those. You can create all the virtual folders you want. The beauty of it is that you don't have to go searching every time, because the virtual folder always reflects what's on your hard drive right now, not what was on it when you last performed the search.
Getting the most from searches, the search index, and virtual folders requires that you invest a little time in learning and understand how it all works. For best results, spend some time fine-tuning the search index to work the way you need it to. Chapters 30 and 31 tell how.
NEW FEATURE Windows Vista was designed and built from the ground up with security in mind, making your system much less vulnerable to security threats.
Security
Security is a huge issue these days. The basic problem is that the PC and early operating systems were conceived and built before there was an Internet. The idea was that a PC would be a personal computer, and people didn't need a whole lot of security. After all, who would write a malicious program to wreak havoc on their own computer?
The Internet changed all that. The Internet allowed the bad guys who could write malicious software to harm other people's computers. Personal computers were sitting ducks for such attacks because nobody was thinking about such things when personal computers were initially conceived.
All of the solutions to the security problems so far are like afterthoughts, held in place with spit and paper clips. You have to purchase and install third-party programs, learn to use them, and keep them up to date. It's just a pain.
Ask any security professional what the real solution to the security problem is, and you'll get this answer: "Security has to be designed and built into a program from the ground up." And that's just what the people at Microsoft did with Vista. It's not just Windows XP with a pretty face. It's an entirely new operating system built from the ground up with security in mind at every step in the process.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Alan Simpson's Windows Vista Bibleby Alan Simpson Todd Meister Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission.
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