Windows Presentation Foundation

The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Vista's new graphical subsystem, and it's responsible for all the interface changes in the Vista package. WPF implements a new graphics model that can take full advantage of today's powerful graphics processing units (GPUs). With WPF, all output goes through the powerful Direct3D layer (so the CPU doesn't have to deal with any graphics); this output also is all vector based, so WPF produces extremely high-resolution images that are completely scalable.

Desktop Window Manager

The Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is a new technology that assumes control over the screen display. With Vista, applications draw their graphics to an off-screen buffer, and then the DWM composites the buffer contents on the screen.

Improved Graphics

The combination of the WPF and DWM means that Vista graphics are the best Windows graphics ever. Program and document windows no longer "tear" when you move them quickly across the screen, animations applied to actions such as minimizing a window are richer and more effective, icons scale up and down with no loss of quality, and transparency effects are applied to window title bars and borders.

Transactional NTFS

The Windows Vista file system implements a new technology called Transactional NTFS, or TxF, for short. TxF applies transactional database ideas to the file system. This means that if some mishap occurs to your datait could be a system crash, a program crash, an overwrite to an important file, or even just imprudent edits to a fileVista allows you to roll back the file to a previous version. It's a lot like the System Restore feature, except that it works not for the entire system, but for individual files, folders, and volumes.

XML Paper Specification

Windows Vista supports a new Microsoft document format called the XML Paper Specification, or XPS. This is an XML schema designed to create documents that are high-fidelity reproductions of existing documents. In other words, documents published as XPS and opened in an XPS viewer program should look exactly the same as they do in the original application. Microsoft has incorporated an XPS viewer into Windows Vista, so any Vista user will automatically be able to view XPS documents. (The viewer runs within Internet Explorer.)

Microsoft is also licensing XPS royalty-free so developers can incorporate XPS viewing and publishing features into their products without cost. This means it should be easy to publish XPS documents from a variety of applications.