Windows Vista (previously codenamed "Longhorn") is the next major version of Windows, the successor to Windows XP that will ship in late 2006.

Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn) Beta 1 is out.

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If you were blindsided by Microsoft's announcement last week that the company plans to change Longhorn's name to Windows Vista, you're not alone. Most of Microsoft's employees didn't find out about the change until just before the general public did. Although you're probably used to Microsoft's public marketing campaigns, it might interest you to know that the software giant engages in the same sort of activity when it communicates changes such as the Windows Vista branding to employees and partners.

According to internal Microsoft documentation, the company's decision to announce the Windows Vista branding last week wasn't coincidental. Microsoft has been stung by repeated disappointments with Longhorn, a project that has veered ever closer to complete disaster on more than one occasion during the past several years. "The strategic objective [is to] communicate the essence of Windows Vista and start to make it real for influentials, partners, customers, and [Microsoft] employees, with an element of surprise to help fuel anticipation prior to Beta 1," the internal documentation stated. "[Microsoft will] continue to establish credibility by announcing Beta 1 timing as a proof point to development progress and meeting our milestone commitments [and will] reaffirm that Windows Vista Beta 1 is a build for IT audiences, primarily focused on the 'confidence' pillar (fundamentals) at this point in time, but more is to come."

In an internal Microsoft newsletter, John B. Williams, general manager of Windows Communications, explained to employees how the company chose the name Windows Vista. "Part of coming up with the name was to make sure that we reflected what the product actually does and the positioning we want to take to market," he said. "We started the initial brainstorms and came up with something like a thousand names. We went through several series of research, several series of reviews, and worked across a number of teams to come down to a tighter and tighter list. Through all this, we came up with a solid final candidate."

Microsoft considered naming the product Windows Seven or Windows 07 because of its release proximity to the year 2007. "We had as final candidates a number [Seven or 07] and different variations on the notion of a vista or view," Williams said. Microsoft will actually mark the release Windows version 6.0, however, and the number seven didn't seem to have the same emotional feel that Windows Vista did, so the company dropped that choice.

Williams said that Group Vice President Jim Allchin had the final say on the branding, and the team of marketing people responsible for the change went to Allchin not just with the name but with the thinking behind the name. "How can we take what the product is and what it delivers and the value proposition that comes with that, take our positioning that we want to establish versus our competitors, take the heritage of Windows and where we have equity, and also what resonated with customers?" Williams asked. "It was the intersection of those things that led to this name."

Microsoft was also concerned that employees, partners, and customers would have a difficult time dropping the Longhorn moniker because it's been in use for 4 long years. "I think as the product becomes real and people start to play with it--we have Beta 1 coming up here shortly--and they understand Vista's value proposition, it will be a very natural transition," Williams added. "What was XP's code name?" It was Whistler, actually, but most Microsoft customers (and even employees) probably don't remember that.

In a message to Windows Client Business employees, Senior Vice President Will Poole explained the name change a day after Microsoft first announced it to a small group of partners. "Yesterday, at the Microsoft Global Briefing in the Georgia Dome, we reached a significant milestone," he said. "We unveiled the name of our next client operating system, Windows Vista ... Our field sales and marketing teams have been helping us build momentum with developers, customers, and partners. Beta 1 will be a success because of the contributions of so many of you. We all should feel very proud of what we're accomplishing with Windows Vista.

"The name of our product captures the core essence and value proposition it delivers--all in two words: Windows Vista. Today we live in a world of more information, with more ways to communicate and more things to do. Every day millions of people around the globe rely on their Windows PCs to manage their increasingly digital lives. While existing tools for managing digital information are powerful, today's world requires more. You want the PC to adapt to you so you can cut through the clutter and focus on what's important to you. Windows Vista brings clarity to your world and helps you to be confident, clear, and connected." He then directed employees to internal resources to learn more about Windows Vista.

"We have stayed true to our mission to innovate and deliver value to our customers and partners," Poole said. "With Beta 1, we will start to give the world its first glimpse of our product, with most end-user features coming in Beta 2. We are on track to deliver Windows Vista in 2006."

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Installation

Compared to the installation routine for Windows XP, Windows Vista Beta 1's Setup has been drastically simplified. I installed the beta in two ways on a number of different machines: As a clean install on a new partition, starting from Windows XP and as a clean install as the only OS on the machine, booting from the Setup DVD.And yes, you read that right: Windows Vista 1 Beta 1, in either x86 or x64 form, comes only on DVD. In both cases, Setup only prompts you for a few simple items and then does its thing. An upgrade install (where you upgrade from XP to Vista) does not appear to be available in Beta 1.

In both types of installations, Setup prompts you for your product key, presents the End User License Agreement (EULA), and then lets you choose the installation type (Custom, in this case). Then, you can choose the install partition and the computer name. In the install partition phase (Figure), you can perform tasks such as creating, deleting, and formatting partitions as well. Then, Vista installs, rebooting the system once during the install and once after it's completed.

If you boot the system with the Windows Vista Beta 1 CD, you'll notice a slight change in the language used to prompt you to hit any key to start Setup: It says you can boot "from CD or DVD" and not just from CD like previous Windows versions

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The Windows Vista Beta 1 desktop is visually similar to build 5048, and if you have a dedicated graphics adapter you'll notice that Aero is enabled by default. Windows feature a polished, glass-like translucent look, and window buttons light up as you mouse over them (Figure). One nice touch: the Recycle Bin visually appears to fill up with little crumpled balls of paper as you throw items out (Figure).

The taskbar hasn't changed much, but on notebook computers, you'll notice a new power management icon, which launches a nice dialog (Figure), and a new Presentation Settings icon that lets you configure how the screen behaves when you're giving a presentation (Figure) (I have no idea why that's visible by default).

A third tray icon is more auspicious and will be instantly familiar to users of MSN Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search: It's the Windows Search Engine, and clicking it provides you with quick access to the engine's configuration dialog. The search window, too, should look familiar, since it debuted earlier this year in Mac OS X Tiger (Figure). Windows Search behaves as you'd expect, but I'm going to delve deeper into that feature in a future technology showcase.

The Start menu, too, has changed little since 5048 and features the same odd mix of Windows Vista and XP icons (Figure); Windows Client Group Director Neil Charney told me recently not to fear, that all of the icons throughout Vista would be upgraded to be big, high-resolution, and beautiful. What's interesting is that some of the legacy icons--notably that for Set Program Access and Defaults--look the same as in XP but have been re-rendered in more high resolution versions (Figure).

Start menu behavior is identical to that in 5048, but it bears another look. Instead of a cascading sub-menu for the All Programs link, as with XP, Vista features a curious in-place sub-menu that replaces the left half of the Start menu. Here's how it works. When you click the All Programs link, the left half of the Start menu changes to display the Programs menu, in-place (Figure). If you click on a folder, the list expands to show the contents of that folder (Figure). This, of course, can trigger the appearance of an in-place scroll bar if the programs list gets too long, which is odd looking (Figure). When you click the Back link (which appears in the same location as All Programs), the Start menu returns to its normal state.

Because Microsoft built a search box into the Start menu, you can no longer use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around. To launch the Control Panel in XP, for example, you simply hit the Windows key and then the "C" key and, voila, the Control Panel opens. In Windows Vista, however, when you hit the "C" key, the system assumes you're searching for an application (Figure). Sigh.

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Before we delve into the various shell locations, like Computer, Documents, and Control Panel, I'd like to explain how the shell namespace has changed in Windows Vista. While the goal was to make the shell easier to navigate, my fear is that the changes will simply confuse people. I'm not a complete idiot, rumors aside, and I still find it a bit confusing. Here's what's happening.

In Windows XP and 2000, Microsoft introduced the concept of the Documents and Settings folder structure (previously, there was a Users folder in the C:\winnt folder in Windows NT 4.0). Under this folder are folders for each user account, so in my Windows XP system, I see a folder for Paul as well as a folder for All Users, which contains information that applies to, well, all users.

In XP, you also see various folders such as Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, and Start Menu under the Paul folder. And inside of My Documents, you see three special shell folders: My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos.

In Windows Vista Beta 1, Microsoft has blown most of that away. Instead of a Documents and Settings folder in the root of the system drive, you'll see a Users folder. And inside of that folder, you'll see folders for individual users (Paul and Administrator, for example) and a UNIX-like folder called Public (Figure). OK, let's navigate in a little further. Inside of the Paul folder are several folders: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Virtual Folders (Figure). Note that Music, Pictures, and Video are no longer subfolders under Documents.

As with XP, all of these folders are "real" folders. That is, they exist at a discrete place in the shell hierarchy and can contain real files and folders. They are literally identical to folders in XP. However, Windows Vista, as you may know, also introduces the concept of Virtual Folders. These are not "real" folders but are instead XML-based containers for links to other files and folders. Virtual Folders do not "contain" anything. Instead, Virtual Folders point to lists of other files and aggregate data in meaningful ways.

Think back to when Windows 95 first shipped. Windows 95 let you create shortcuts to documents and folders in more easily accessible places (typically the desktop). In the same vein, Virtual Folders let you round up related files and folders in more easily accessible places as well. But Virtual Folders are far more powerful than simple shortcuts. That's because Virtual Folders are smart--that is, they update dynamically--and because they make it easier for you to organize your data in ways that make sense to you.

Windows Vista Beta 1 ships with a number of canned Virtual Folders that address obvious needs, and some of them are available right from the Start Menu. Stupidly, some of them are named the same as "real" folders, which is where some of the confusion sets in. So when you click on the Documents link in the Start menu, for example, that opens C:\Users\Paul\Virtual Folders\All Documents and not C:\Users\Paul\Documents as you might expect (Figure). The former (All Documents) is a Virtual Folder that automatically aggregates all of the documents on your hard drive, regardless of their location, while the latter (Documents) is the modern day equivalent of My Documents: It's just a regular folder, and when you save document files from an application like Microsoft Word, that's where they'll go by default.

This distinction is important. As I said before, Virtual Folders don't actually contain anything per se. They're not "real" folders. You can't save a document to the All Documents Virtual Folder, but you can save a document to the Documents folder. Once you've saved that file, however, it will appear in both locations (Figure). Yep, it's confusing.

Microsoft continues this naming nightmare with other Start Menu links. The Pictures link (Figure) actually opens a Virtual Folder called "All Pictures and Videos" (and not C:\Users\Paul\Pictures). The Music link (Figure) opens a Virtual Folder called "Albums" (and not C:\Users\Paul\Music).

Regardless of the naming confusing, the new namespace is a good thing and the best solution we'll have until Microsoft takes the bold (and, if I may say so, long overdue) step of ridding Windows of the limiting drive letter-based file system we still use. That's because the average Windows user will never have to worry about drive letters with Windows Vista. Virtual Folders make Windows Vista friendlier to use. In most cases.

One exception is a clean install where you intend to copy over data from a network share or external hard drive. Let's say you just did a clean install of Windows Vista and you'd like to copy over all your photos, music files, and other documents. You can't copy photos, for example, into the "All Pictures and Videos" Virtual Folder, which is what you get when you click Pictures on the Start Menu. Instead, you need to open up the "real" Pictures folder. Fortunately, a link to the Pictures folder is found in the Navigation Pane (on the left) in the All Pictures and Videos window. Similar links can be found in Albums and All Documents, naturally.

Virtual Folders are a neat concept, and like I noted earlier, Windows Vista Beta 1 ships with a number of them (like All Videos, Favorite Music, Artists, and so on). But the real power of Virtual Folders is that you can create your own. At its heart, a Virtual Folder is really just the visual results of a query against a database that contains a list of the content that is stored on your hard drive. As with any database query, you can filter down the results list to match certain criteria. And of course you can create your own queries and, thus, your own Virtual Folders. I'll look at this process in an upcoming Technology Showcase.

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The Computer link on the Start menu, as you might expect, is Vista's equivalent to My Computer (Figure). This window gives you a drive-high view of your PC, and will list any hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and removable storage devices that might be connected to your system. As with other shell windows, Computer features a preview pane on the bottom (which can be moved to the right side or hidden) and a breadcrumb bar in place of XP's address bar, which makes it handy to jump around in the shell namespace as needed. Inexplicably, some windows display the preview pane on the top and have different options available to them (Figure). There's nothing like consistency.

Control Panel has been significantly updated with a new look and feel, though it retains the category-based organizational scheme (Figure) that Microsoft pioneered in XP (and Apple borrowed in Mac OS X 10.3, see my review). In Classic View, Control Panel betrays a few new features, including an Auxiliary Display applet, which will work with the next generation of notebook computers and Tablet PCs (Figure). A new Programs applet replaces the old Add or Remove Programs and provides front-ends for adding programs, viewing and removing installed programs and updates, and other options (Figure). A new Solutions to Problems applet will apparently one day out-help Help, but right now it's pretty useless (Figure). And the Windows Parental Controls applet hints at future features, while in Beta 1 it offers just limited functionality (Figure).

Some of the functionality in Vista Beta 1 is in transition. For example, while the Add Printer Wizard is new, it can currently only find Bluetooth-based printers in Beta 1, and not network-attached printers (Figure). In other places, like Mouse settings, the dialogs are identical to those in XP.

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One thing that's changed pretty dramatically is the way Explorer displays information. In XP, we got an evolved version of the Windows Explorer shell, featuring the same address bar and icon set we've come to know and sort of love. XP also added a somewhat controversial task pane, which I felt was a pretty successful attempt at adding task-oriented functionality to the OS.

Yes, the Windows Vista version of Explorer still displays icons that represent files and folders. But just about everything else has changed. The address bar has been replaced with a breadcrumb bar that makes it extremely simple to navigate around the shell namespace, and this is one feature I think users are going to wonder how they previously lived without (Figure). The breadcrumb bar works a lot like the address bar, but it gives you the ability to arbitrarily navigate back up into the shell namespace from any point.

Here's how it works. Say you navigate into a specific shell location, such as C:\Users\Paul\Documents. In order to navigate from there to C:\Users\Administrator, you'd have to hit the Back button twice, and then double-click on the Administrator folder. Or, you could edit the text in the address bar manually, your choice. In Vista, all you need to do is select the little down arrow next to Users in the breadcrumb bar (Figure) and then select Administrator from the list. Bang: You're there.

The new Explorer isn't just about a better address bar however. Microsoft has also removed the standard menu we're used to (though it's available as a "Classic Menu" choice) and has replaced it with a new bar that's sort of a combination menu and toolbar. In a typical Explorer window (i.e. one displaying files), you'll see an Organize button; which drops down a menu including choices like Rename, Move, Copy, E-mail, and Delete (Figure); a Views buttons, which lets you set the icon size and style (Figure) (quick tip: Hold down the CTRL button and use your mouse's scroll wheel to scroll between the choices automatically); a Show/Hide button that reveals and hides various UI elements, and a Share button.

A typical Explorer window now displays a Navigation pane on the left side, which is sort of like the old Explorer tree view, but is instead dynamic, showing you commonly used shell locations and shell locations that are related in some way to the folder you're currently viewing. For example, if you navigate to C:\Users\Paul\Documents, you'll see All Documents, Authors, Public, and other related folders in the Navigation pane (Figure).

On the bottom of most Explorer windows is a Preview pane (Figure). This pane dynamically changes depending on which icons are selected. If you select a text file, for example, you'll see keyword, rating, author, and size information (Figure). A music file displays album title, year, rating, duration, genre, and track number, along with an album art representation (Figure). You can resize the Preview pane, which reveals even more meta data information (Figure), or you can place it on the right side of the window (Figure) by selecting the Show/Hide button and selecting Show Preview Pane on Right. You can also hide the Preview pane if you're a purist.

There's a lot more going on with Explorer windows, but I'll save that for a future tech showcase. As a teaser, I'll just note that the Explorer in Windows Vista supports lists, auto lists, and virtual folders, and those are all things I think most Windows users will be very interested in.

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While Beta 1 isn't a tremendous release for end users--that is, most of the end user goodness like Movie Maker and future digital media enhancements are missing in Beta 1--there are still all kinds of new things going on here. Some are already nicely implemented, while others are just wisps and hints of things to come. Here are some of them

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Windows Vista Beta 1 features a new Fax Console that includes a Fax Configuration Wizard (Figure) and a fax cover page editor. The console itself is set up like an email client, which makes me wonder why this functionality wasn't simply built into Outlook Express (or better yet, Outlook).

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Windows Vista includes an activity center of sorts called Games (or Games Explorer) that aggregates all of the games installed on your system into a single location. By default, you only see the silly little games Microsoft provides with Vista--FreeCell, Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Spider Solitarie--but presumably others will appear as they're installed (Figure). Games Explorer appears as the Games link in the Start menu.

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