Microsoft Windows Vista Build 5231 Indepth Look - Part 2
Time to explore the inner workings of Windows Vista. Here we'll take a look at controls, application compatibility, performance, and a few under-the-hood details.
This is the second part of a two part series. Once again, this is pre-beta software. Nothing has been finalized and performance should not be taken to be at all indicative of the final release of Windows Vista.
What was once labeled Avalon is now to be known as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF from here on out). WPF replaces Microsoft's decrepit old system of bitmaps and boxes with a whole world of new capabilities. These new whiz-bang developments include support for animations, vectors, embedded video, 3D, alpha channel (transparency), and much more. If this sounds a little bit like the capabilities of Macromedia/Adobe's Flash then you've been paying attention. This provides designers functionality much like Flash throughout the operation system. Unlike Flash though, this is built deep into Windows and should be mostly transparent to the user. There is a performance penalty for all this eye candy though. To run the full Aero interface with a theme like Glass you will need a graphics card that has 64 megabytes of memory with full DirectX 9 support. Those are minimums of course; you'll want more. My current card, an aging ATi All-in-Wonder 9600 XT, managed to run everything but did not do so 100% smoothly. Many window animations and the simple act of resizing a window could cause an annoying amount of sloth.
