First Impressions

When Windows Vista loads for the first time, you will immediately notice the new Start button & Start menu (Figure). The new Start menu increases the space on the left where Windows displays the most recently used applications so that it now uses about 2/3 of the width of the Start menu. This is a good improvement, because as seen in the previous beta, the "All Programs" items now display 'in place' inside this part of the Start menu. To reduce the width of the items listed on the right side of the Start menu, Microsoft removed the icons from the descriptions. When using the Aero Glass interface, the icons now appear at the top of the Start menu, sticking out over the top of the menu (when using Aero Basic, the icon will just appear at the top inside the Start menu (Figure)).

Changes have been made to the Windows Taskbar too; it now supports thumbnail previews (Figure). This can be helpful in determining the state of a program you have running in the background without having to bring the program into focus.

There's also a new icon on the "Quick Launch" toolbar (which in Windows Vista is enabled by default, as opposed to Windows XP where it was not enabled by default) called "Window Switcher" (Figure). Pressing the icon will show you a 3-D view of all open windows (applications/programs or other windows) on your system, and you'll be able to scroll through them using your mouse scroll button (Figure). Pressing "Enter" will open the selected window.

Vista User Interface

You'll quickly notice that build 5270 includes a whole slew of updates to the UI. When you right-click an empty space on your Windows desktop, you'll no longer see "Properties" listed as the main "entry point" to change desktop settings. Instead you'll see "Personalize Computer" (Figure). Selecting that will open a Window which will allow you to quickly change many things (Figure).

Microsoft has also improved the scalability of the UI, which greatly improves Vista when used in high DPI settings, which in turn will help users who have problems with their vision or when using Vista on high-resolution displays (Figure). To this end, Microsoft is updating all icons in Vista to a new standard of 256x256 pixels. You can select the size of the icons displayed on your desktop in four varieties: small, medium, large and extra large, and no matter the size, the icons will look beautiful.

The new DPI-scaling (which can be accessed from the Display Settings under Personalization), will let you scale the interface between 96 and 192 DPI, or to any custom size you choose.

Build 5270 includes all UI versions that the final version of Vista will support: Aero Glass (Figure), Aero Basic (Figure) and Classic (Figure).

Microsoft also includes a new control panel applet called Color Scheme, which let you alter the Aero window chrome with a number of included colors, or you can customize it to your personal liking using an advanced color mixer (Figure).

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