Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Features new to Windows Vista" in English language version.
In my opinion, Windows XP was too aggressive in the way it handled properties. It assumed everything was an OLE Compound Document, or failing that, would store data in NTFS secondary streams. This works great for setting properties on arbitrary types, but it leads to a whole slew of other bugs, including several where a user's data is lost. Windows Vista avoids this assumption. Instead, property handlers are explicitly registered and are assumed to provide a stronger guarantee that if they are storing properties, they are storing them properly in the file itself.
The DWM operates in an environment where other DirectX applications do operate. Video playback, WPF applications, windowed games (btw, Vista "inbox" games like Solitaire, etc., are now written in DirectX), etc. In fact, the DWM is responsible for the final presentation of those applications. So it's critical that such DirectX applications 'play well together' and play well with the DWM.
As a result of a series of changes that are too numerous to describe here, the OS magnifier is no longer 'WPF-aware', and does bitmap scaling just like it does of other content. Although we do lose this feature, we believe that without the dependencies that enabled Magnifier to work in a WPF-specific way, we can be more agile in what we provide to WPF customers moving forward.
The full panoply of controls over NTFS permissions that you might have seen in earlier versions of Windows remains available in Windows Vista. And unlike Windows XP, in which you had to disable Simple File Sharing (an act that also made other changes besides exposing the security controls), in Windows Vista, the Security tab is always available—to all users, in all editions, regardless of whether the Sharing wizard is enabled.
In my opinion, Windows XP was too aggressive in the way it handled properties. It assumed everything was an OLE Compound Document, or failing that, would store data in NTFS secondary streams. This works great for setting properties on arbitrary types, but it leads to a whole slew of other bugs, including several where a user's data is lost. Windows Vista avoids this assumption. Instead, property handlers are explicitly registered and are assumed to provide a stronger guarantee that if they are storing properties, they are storing them properly in the file itself.
The full panoply of controls over NTFS permissions that you might have seen in earlier versions of Windows remains available in Windows Vista. And unlike Windows XP, in which you had to disable Simple File Sharing (an act that also made other changes besides exposing the security controls), in Windows Vista, the Security tab is always available—to all users, in all editions, regardless of whether the Sharing wizard is enabled.
The DWM operates in an environment where other DirectX applications do operate. Video playback, WPF applications, windowed games (btw, Vista "inbox" games like Solitaire, etc., are now written in DirectX), etc. In fact, the DWM is responsible for the final presentation of those applications. So it's critical that such DirectX applications 'play well together' and play well with the DWM.
As a result of a series of changes that are too numerous to describe here, the OS magnifier is no longer 'WPF-aware', and does bitmap scaling just like it does of other content. Although we do lose this feature, we believe that without the dependencies that enabled Magnifier to work in a WPF-specific way, we can be more agile in what we provide to WPF customers moving forward.
