Features new to Windows 7

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Some of the new features included in Windows 7 are advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors,^[1] improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

Contents 1 Shell and user interface 1.1 Desktop 1.2 Windows Explorer 1.3 Start menu 1.4 Taskbar 1.5 Window management mouse gestures 1.6 Keyboard shortcuts 1.7 Font management 1.8 Devices 2 Multi-touch 3 Graphics 3.1 DirectX 3.2 Desktop Window Manager 3.3 Other changes 4 Core operating system 5 File system 5.1 Solid state drives 5.2 Virtual hard disks 5.3 Disk partitioning 5.4 Removable Media 5.5 BitLocker to Go 6 Boot performance 7 Multimedia 7.1 Windows Media Center 7.2 Format support 8 Security 8.1 Biometrics 9 Networking 9.1 Firewall 9.2 DNSSEC 10 Management features 11 Other features 12 See also 13 References 14 External links

Shell and user interface

Windows 7 retains the Windows Aero user interface and visual style first introduced with its predecessor, Windows Vista, but many areas have seen enhancements.

Desktop

Themes

Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to setting the colors of the window chrome, desktop background, desktop icons, mouse pointers and sound schemes, themes in Windows 7 include desktop slideshow settings. A new control panel interface, accessible through the "Personalize" context menu item on the desktop, has been introduced which provides the ability to customize and switch between themes, as well as download more themes from Microsoft's web site. Support for "theme packs" is included; theme packs are cabinet files with an extension of .themepack, and consist of a .theme as well as any number of image, sound, icon, and mouse cursor files.^[2] Windows 7 recognizes this file format and will switch the user's theme to the theme contained inside when opened. A Windows 7 theme can also specify an RSS feed from which new desktop background images can be downloaded.

The default theme is titled "Windows 7", which consists of a single desktop background codenamed "Harmony" and the same sound scheme, desktop icons and mouse pointers as Windows Vista. Six new "Aero Themes" are included: Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed. The Windows 7 Beta includes themes for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia, and while the theme for the user's home country is the only one displayed in the user interface, the files for all these themes are included in the operating system installation.^[3] Each of the themes included with Windows 7 consists of six desktop backgrounds each at 1920x1200 resolution; none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. The country-specific desktop backgrounds depict both famous places in those countries (such as the Sydney skyline) as well as country scenes. A number of sound schemes are included, each associated with an included theme: Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata.

Additional theme packs are available as free downloads from Microsoft's web site.

Desktop Slideshow

Windows Explorer includes a desktop slideshow that changes the desktop background in a designated amount of time with a smooth fading transition. This feature supports pre-downloaded sets of wallpapers and also supports photo RSS feed.

Gadgets

Windows Vista introduced Gadgets and a sidebar which provides the ability to anchor Gadgets to the side of the user's desktop. In Windows 7, the sidebar has been removed, while gadgets can still be placed on the desktop. Windows 7 adds a Windows Media Center gadget to the default collection while removing the Contacts and Notes gadgets.

Managing gadgets is more closely integrated with Windows Explorer, but the gadgets themselves continue to operate in a separate sidebar.exe process.^[4] The Desktop context menu includes a new "Gadgets" menu option to access the gadget gallery, and a "View" sub-menu option to show or hide gadgets. Hiding gadgets results in the sidebar.exe process being unloaded, which Microsoft says is a power-saving practice. Unlike Windows Vista, all gadgets run in a single process, which saves memory, and the process is not run at all if the user has no gadgets on the desktop.

Branding and customization

OEMs and enterprises are able to customize the logon screen wallpaper of Windows 7 that is displayed before a user logs on.

Windows Explorer

Libraries

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 supports Libraries, virtual folders described in a .library-ms file that aggregates content from various locations - including shared folders on networked systems if the shared folder has been indexed by the host system - and present them in a unified view. Searching in a library automatically federates the query to the remote systems, in addition to searching on the local system, so that files on the remote systems are also searched. Unlike search folders, Libraries are backed by a physical location which allows files to be saved in the Libraries. Such files are transparently saved in the backing physical folder. The default save location for a library may be configured by the user, as can the default view layout for each library. Libraries are generally stored in the Libraries special folder, which allows them to be displayed on the navigation pane.

By default, a new user account in Windows 7 contains four libraries, for different file types: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. They are configured to include the user's profile folders for these respective file types, as well as the computer's corresponding Public folders.

In addition to aggregating multiple storage locations, Libraries enable Arrangement Views and Search Filter Suggestions. Arrangement Views allow you to pivot your view of the library's contents based on metadata. For example, selecting the "By Month" view in the Pictures library will display photos in stacks, where each stack represents a month of photos based on the date they were taken. In the Music library, the "By Artist" view will display stacks of albums from the artists in your collection, and browsing into an artist stack will then display the relevant albums.

Search Filter Suggestions are a new feature of the Windows 7 Explorer's search box. When the user clicks in the search box, a menu shows up below it showing recent searches as well as suggested Advanced Query Syntax filters that the user can type. When one is selected (or typed in manually), the menu will update to show the possible values to filter by for that property, and this list is based on the current location and other parts of the query already typed. For example, selecting the "tags" filter or typing "tags:" into the search box will display the list of possible tag values which will return search results.

Arrangement Views and Search Filter Suggestions are database-backed features which require that all locations in the Library be indexed by the Windows Search service. Local disk locations must be indexed by the local indexer, and Windows Explorer will automatically add locations to the indexing scope when they are included in a library. Remote locations can be indexed by the indexer on another Windows 7 machine, on a Windows machine running Windows Search 4 (such as Windows Vista or Windows Home Server), or on another device that implements the MS-WSP remote query protocol.^[5]

Federated search

Windows Explorer also supports federating search to external data sources, such as custom databases or web services, that are exposed over the web and described via an OpenSearch definition. The federated location description (called a Search Connector) is provided as a .osdx file. Once installed, the data source becomes queryable directly from Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer features, such as previews and thumbnails, work with the results of a federated search as well.

Start menu

The start orb now has a fade-in highlight effect when the user moves the mouse over it.

Windows 7's Start menu retains the two-column layout of its predecessors, with several functional changes:

• The "Documents", "Pictures" and "Music" buttons now link to the Libraries of the same name.
• A "Devices and Printers" option has been added that displays a new device manager.
• The "shut down" icon in Windows Vista has been replaced with a text link indicating what action will be taken when the icon is clicked. The default action to take is now configurable through the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window.
• Taskbar Jump Lists are presented in the Start Menu via a guillemet; when the user moves his or her mouse over the guillemet, or presses the right-arrow key, the right-hand side of the Start menu is widened and replaced with the application's Jump List.

The search box, first introduced with Windows Vista, has been extended to support searching Control Panel items. For example, clicking the Start button then typing "wireless" will show Control Panel options related to configuring and connecting to wireless network, adding Bluetooth devices, and troubleshooting. Group Policy settings for Windows Explorer provide the ability for administrators of an Active Directory domain, or an expert user to add up to five Internet web sites and five additional "search connectors" to the Search Results view in the Start menu. The links, which appear at the bottom of the pane, allow the search to be executed again on the selected web site or search connector. Microsoft suggests that network administrators could use this feature to enable searching of corporate Intranets or an internal SharePoint server.^[6]

Taskbar

The Windows Taskbar has seen its most significant revision since its introduction in Windows 95. The taskbar is 10 pixels taller than in Windows Vista to accommodate touch screen input and a new larger default icon size, though a smaller taskbar size is available. Running applications are denoted by a border frame around the icon, while applications can be pinned to the taskbar, so that shortcuts to them appear when they are not running. Within this border, a color effect (dependent on the predominant RGB value of the icon) that follows the mouse also indicates the opened status of the application. The glass taskbar is also more transparent. Taskbar buttons show icons by default, not application titles, unless they are set to not combine. Only icons are shown when the application is not running.

Pinned applications

The Quick Launch toolbar has been removed from default configuration, but may be easily added. The Windows 7 taskbar is more application-oriented than window-oriented, and therefore doesn't show window titles (these are shown when an application icon is clicked or hovered over, provided there are multiple windows for the application). Applications can now be pinned to the taskbar allowing the user instant access to the applications they commonly use. There are a few ways to pin applications to the taskbar. One can drag and drop the icon onto the taskbar. The other way to do so is by right-clicking the application’s icon and pinning the icon to the taskbar.

Thumbnail previews

Thumbnail previews which were introduced in Windows Vista have been expanded to not only preview the windows opened by the application in a small-sized thumbnail view, but to also interact with them. The user can close any window opened by clicking the X on the corresponding thumbnail preview. The name of the window is also shown in the thumbnail preview. Another new feature added is the ability to get a "peek" of the window by hovering over the thumbnail preview. Peeking brings up only the window of the thumbnail preview over which the mouse hovers and turns any other windows on the desktop transparent. This also works for tabs in Internet Explorer; individual tabs may be peeked at in the thumbnail previews. In addition to these features, thumbnail previews integrate Thumbnail Toolbars ^[7] which can control the application from the thumbnail previews themselves. For example, if Windows Media Player is opened and the mouse is hovering on the application icon, the thumbnail preview will allow the user the ability to Play, Stop, and Play Next/Previous track without having to switch to the Windows Media Player window.

Jump list

These are menu options available from right-clicking any of the icons on the taskbar or by holding the left mouse button and sliding up on an icon. Each application will have unique jump lists which will correspond to the features unique to the application whether it be recent files opened or common tasks. For example, a Microsoft Word jump list might display all the recent documents opened. The Windows Media Player jump list, for example, displays recently played tracks and playlists that have been played. Internet Explorer's jump list displays recent history of websites and the ability to open a new tab or start InPrivate Browsing. Windows Live Messenger's jump list displays select common tasks such as instant messaging, signing off, and changing online status. While up to 10 menu items may appear on a jump list by default, Windows 7 provides the ability to customize this.^[8]

Notification area

The notification area has been redesigned; the standard Volume, Network, Power and Action Center status icons are present, but no other application icons are shown unless the user has chosen for them to be shown. A new "Notification Area Icons" control panel has been added which replaces the "Customize Notification Icons" dialog box in the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window first introduced in Windows XP. In addition to being able to configure whether the application icons are shown, the ability to hide each application's notification balloons has been added. The user can then view the notifications at a later time.

A triangle to the left of the visible notification icons displays the hidden notification icons to the user. Unlike Windows Vista and Windows XP, the hidden icons are displayed in a window above the taskbar, instead of on the taskbar. Icons can be dragged between this window and the notification area.

Aero Peek

In past versions of Windows, the taskbar ended with the notification area on the right side. However, there is now the Aero Peek button, which, when clicked or hovered over with the mouse, displays the desktop and gadgets by turning all windows transparent. This replaces the Show Desktop shortcut in the Quick Launch bar in previous versions of Windows. Aero Peek exhibits the same features used by the thumbnail previews, except it applies them to the desktop. If the mouse hovers over it, all windows are transparent, as shown in the picture. If the button is clicked, all applications are minimized, and when clicked again, they are restored.

Window management mouse gestures

Aero Snap; Window maximizing and tiling

Windows can be dragged to the top of the screen to maximize them and dragged away to restore them. Dragging a window to the left or right of the screen makes it take up half the screen allowing the user to tile two windows next to each other. Also resizing the window to the bottom of the screen or top will extend the window full but retain the width of the window.^[9] These features can be disabled via the Ease of Access Center if users do not wish the windows to automatically resize.^[10]

Aero Shake

Aero Shake allows users to clear up any clutter on their screen by shaking (dragging back and forth) a window of their choice with the mouse. All other windows will minimize, while the window the user shook stays active on the screen.^[11] When the window is shaken again, they are all restored, similar to desktop preview.

Keyboard shortcuts

A variety of new keyboard shortcuts have been introduced.^{[12] [13]}

Global keyboard shortcuts:

• Win+Space operates as a keyboard shortcut for Aero Peek.
• Win+Up and Win+Down are new shortcuts for Maximize and Restore/Minimize.
• Win+Shift+Up vertically maximises the current window
• Win+Left and Win+Right snap the current window to the left or right half of the current display; successive keypresses will move the window to other monitors in a multi-monitor configuration.
• Win+Shift+Left and Win+Shift+Right move the current window to the left or right display.
• Win+ + and Win+ − (minus sign) zoom the desktop in and out.
• Win+Home operates as a keyboard shortcut for Aero Shake.
• Win+P shows an "external display options" selector that gives the user the choice of showing the desktop on only the computer's screen, only the external display, with the same output on both (clone), or on both displays with independent desktops (extend).

Taskbar:

• Shift + Click, or Middle click starts a new instance of the application, regardless of whether it's already running.
• Ctrl + Shift + Click starts a new instance with Administrator privileges; by default, a User Account Control prompt will be displayed.
• Shift + Right-click shows the classic Window menu (Restore / Minimize / Move / etc); right-clicking on the application's thumbnail image will also show this menu. If the icon being clicked on is a grouped icon, the classic menu with Restore All / Minimize All / Close All menu is shown.
• Ctrl + Click on a grouped icon cycles between the windows (or tabs) in the group.

Font management

The user interface for font management has been overhauled.^[14] As with Windows Vista, the collection of installed fonts is shown in a Windows Explorer window, but fonts from the same font family appear as "stacks" instead of as individual icons. A user can then double-click on the font stack and see the individual font. A preview of the font is displayed as part of the icon as well. New options for hiding installed fonts are included; a hidden font remains installed, but is not enumerated when an application asks for a list of available fonts. Windows Vista had received considerable criticism for including the same "Add Font" dialog that had existed as far back as Windows NT 3.1; this dialog has been removed.

The Font dialog box^[15] has also been updated to show previews of the font selection in the selection lists.^[16]

The fontview.exe default font viewing application has replaced the "Properties" button with a "Install" button.

Devices

There are two major new user interface components for device management in Windows 7, "Devices and Printers" and "Device Stage". Both of these are integrated with Windows Explorer, and together provide a simplified view of what devices are connected to the computer, and what capabilities they support.

Devices and Printers

Devices and Printers is a new Control Panel interface that is directly accessible from the Start menu. Unlike the Device Manager Control Panel applet, which is still present, the icons shown on the Devices and Printers screen is limited to components of the system that a non-expert user will recognize as plug-in devices. For example, an external monitor connected to the system will be displayed as a device, but the internal monitor on a laptop will not. Device-specific features are available through the context menu for each device; an external monitor's context menu, for example, provides a link to the "Display Settings" control panel.

This new Control Panel applet also replaces the "Printers" window in prior versions of Windows; common printer operations such as setting the default printer, installing or removing printers, and configuring properties such as paper size are done through this control panel.

Device Stage

Device Stage provides a centralized location for an externally-connected multi-function device to present its functionality to the user. When a device such as a portable music player is connected to the system, the device appears as an icon on the task bar, as well as in Windows Explorer.

Windows 7 ships with high-resolution images of a number of popular devices, and is capable of connecting to the Internet to download images of devices it doesn't recognize. Opening the icon presents a window that displays actions relevant to that device. Screenshots of the technology presented by Microsoft suggest that a mobile phone could offer options for two-way synchronization, configuring ring-tones, copying pictures and videos, managing the device in Windows Media Player, and using Windows Explorer to navigate through the device.^[17] Other device status information such as free memory and battery life can also be shown. The actual per-device functionality is defined via XML files that are downloaded when the device is first connected to the computer, or are provided by the manufacturer on an installation disc.^[18]

Multi-touch

Hilton Locke, who worked on the Tablet PC team at Microsoft, reported on December 11, 2007 that Windows 7 will have new touch features. An overview of the multi-touch capabilities, including a virtual piano program, a mapping and directions program and a touch-aware version of Paint, was demonstrated at the All Things Digital Conference on May 27, 2008. A video demonstrating the multi-touch capabilities was later made available on the web on the same day.^[19]

Graphics

DirectX

• Direct3D 11 is included with Windows 7. It is a strict super-set of Direct3D 10.1, which was introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008.
• Direct2D and DirectWrite, new hardware-accelerated vector graphics and font rendering APIs built on top of Direct3D 10 that are intended to replace GDI/GDI+ for screen-oriented native-code graphics and text drawing. They can be used from managed applications with the Windows API Code Pack
• Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP), a software rasterizer component for DirectX that provides all of the capabilities of Direct3D 10.0 and 10.1 in software.^[20]
• DirectX Video Acceleration-High Definition (DXVA-HD) ^[21]

Direct3D 11, Direct2D, DirectWrite, DXGI 1.1, WARP and several other components will be available for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 by installing the Platform Update for Windows Vista.^[22]

Desktop Window Manager

First introduced in Windows Vista, the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) in Windows 7 has been updated to use version 10.1 of Direct3D API, and its performance has been improved significantly.^[23]

The Desktop Window Manager still requires at least a Direct3D 9-capable video card (supported with new D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_n ^[24]device type introduced with the Direct3D 11 runtime).

With a video driver conforming to Windows Display Driver Model v1.1, DXGI kernel in Windows 7 provides 2D hardware acceleration to APIs such as GDI, Direct2D and DirectWrite (though GDI+ was not updated to use this functionality). This allows DWM to use significantly lower amounts of system memory, which do not grow regardless of how many windows are opened, like it was in Windows Vista.^[25] Systems equipped with a WDDM 1.0 video card will operate in the same fashion as in Windows Vista, using software-only rendering.

The Desktop Window Manager in Windows 7 also adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors.^[26]

Other changes

Support for color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit is included, along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB.^[27][28]

DPI settings in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are per-user, instead of per-machine as in prior versions of Windows. Additionally, DPI settings can be changed without a restart; a logoff/logon is sufficient.^[29]

Core operating system

The following improvements and additions have been made to Windows 7 (and Server 2008 R2) core operating system components:

• AVCHD camera support and Universal Video Class 1.1
• Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA) for TV tuner cards
• Support for up to 256 logical processors^[30]
• Fewer hardware locks and greater parallelism^[31]
• Timer coalescing: Modern processors and chipsets can transition to very low power usage levels while the CPU is idle. In order to reduce the number of times the CPU enters and exits idle states, Windows 7 introduces the concept of "timer coalescing"; multiple applications or device drivers which perform actions on a regular basis can be set to occur at once, instead of each action being performed on their own schedule. This facility is available in both kernel mode, via the KeSetCoalesableTimer API (which would be used in place of KeSetTimerEx), and in user mode with the SetWaitableTimerEx Windows API call (which replaces SetWaitableTimer).^[32]
• Multi-function devices and Device Containers: Prior to Windows 7, every device attached to the system is treated as a single functional end-point, known as a devnode, that has a set of capabilities and a "status". While this is appropriate for single-function devices (such as a keyboard or scanner), it does not accurately represent multi-function devices such as a combination printer/fax machine/scanner, or web-cams with a built-in microphone. In Windows 7, the drivers and status information for multi-function device can be grouped together as a single "Device Container", which is then presented to the user in the new "Devices and Printers" Control Panel as a single unit. This capability is provided by a new Plug and Play property, ContainerID, which is a Globally Unique Identifier that is different for every instance of a physical device. The Container ID can be embedded within the device itself by the manufacturer, or created by Windows and associated with each devnode, when it is connected to the computer for the first time. In order to ensure the uniqueness of the generated Container ID, Windows will attempt to use information unique to the device, such as a MAC address or USB serial number. Devices connected to the computer via USB (both directly, and indirectly via a USB hub), IEEE 1394 (FireWire), eSATA, PCI Express, Bluetooth, and Windows Rally's PnP-X support can make use of Device Containers.^[33]
• Windows Installer 5.0 supports installing and configuring Windows Services,^[34] and provides developers with more control over setting permissions during software installation.^[35] Neither of these features will be available for prior versions of Windows; custom actions to support these features will continue to be required for Windows Installer packages that need to implement these features.
• User-Mode Scheduling: The 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 introduce a user-mode scheduling framework.^[36] On Microsoft Windows operating systems, scheduling of threads inside a process is handled by the kernel. While for most applications this is sufficient, applications with large concurrent threading requirements, such as a database server, can benefit from having a thread scheduler in-process. This is because the kernel no longer needs to be involved in context switches between threads, and it obviates the need for a thread pool mechanism as threads can be created and destroyed much more quickly when no kernel context switches are required.

• Windows 7 will also contain a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates.^[37] It will not initially ship with USB 3.0 support due to delays in the specification being finalized, but will support it with future patches from Windows Update.^[38]

• The "Trusted Installer" account is used to secure some of the core operating system registry keys in the same way that system files were first secured in Windows Vista. The keys have an access control list applied that prevents other users, including the system, from making changes.

• Windows 7 ships with IIS 7.5^[39]
• The ability to join a domain offline.^[40]

File system

Solid state drives

Windows 7 incorporates many engineering changes to reduce the frequency of writes and flushes, which benefit SSDs as well as traditional HDDs to a lesser extent. Disk defragmentation is disabled on SSDs. Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching are disabled by default on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These are tools which are designed to improve performance on mechanical HDDs, but have negligible performance benefits on SSDs compared to the extra drive wear they create. Partitions made with Windows 7’s partition-creating tools are created with the SSD’s alignment needs in mind. ^[41]

Windows 7 makes use of the TRIM command on supported SSDs. This optimises when erase cycles are performed, thereby reducing the need to erase blocks before each write and increasing write performance. However, as of November 2009, hardware support for this command is limited with many drives requiring new firmware or not supporting TRIM at all.

Virtual hard disks

The Enterprise, Ultimate, and Professional editions of Windows 7 incorporate support for the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format. VHD files can be mounted as drives, created, and booted from, in the same way as WIM files.^[42] Furthermore, an installed version of Windows 7 can be booted and run from a VHD drive, even on non-virtual hardware, thereby providing a new way to multi boot Windows. Some features such as hibernation and Bitlocker are not available when booting from VHD.

Disk partitioning

The default disk partitioning structure is to create two partitions: the first for booting, BitLocker and running the Windows Recovery Environment and second to install the operating system.^[43]

Removable Media

Windows 7 has also seen improvements to the Safely Remove Hardware menu, including the ability to eject just one camera card at the same time (from a single hub) and retain the ports for future use without reboot; and removable media is now also listed under its label, rather than just its drive letter like it was from Windows Me/2000 - Vista.^[44] Also, Windows Explorer now (by default) only shows ports from a card reader in the My Computer menu which actually have a card present.^[44]

BitLocker to Go

BitLocker brings encryption support to removable disks such as USB drives. Such devices can be protected by a passphrase, a recovery key, or be automatically unlocked on a computer ^[45]

Boot performance

According to data gathered from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, 35% of Vista SP1 installations boot up in 30 seconds or less.^[46] The more lengthy boot times on the remainder of the machines are mainly due to some services or programs that are loaded but are not required when the system is first started. Microsoft's Mike Fortin, a Distinguished Engineer on the Windows team^[47], noted in August 2008 that Microsoft has set aside a team to work solely on the issue, and that team aims to "significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times." They "focused very hard on increasing parallelism of driver initialization." Also, it aims to "dramatically reduce" the number of system services, along with their processor, storage, and memory demands.

Multimedia

Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center in Windows 7 has retained much of the design and feel of its predecessor, but with a variety of user interface shortcuts and browsing capabilities.^[48] Playback of H.264 video both locally and through a Media Center Extender (including the Xbox 360) is supported.

Some notable enhancements in Windows 7 Media Center include a new mini guide, a new scrub bar, the option to color code the guide by show type, and internet content that is more tightly integrated with regular TV via the guide. All Windows 7 versions now support up to four tuners of each type (QAM, ATSC, CableCARD, NTSC, etc).

When browsing the media library, items that don't have album art are shown in a range of foreground and background color combinations instead of using white text on a blue background. When the left or right remote control buttons are held down to browse the library quickly, a two-letter prefix of the current album name is prominently shown as a visual aid. The Picture Library includes new slideshow capabilities, and individual pictures can be rated.

For television support, the Windows Media Center "TV Pack" released by Microsoft in 2008 is incorporated into Windows Media Center. This includes support for CableCARD and North American (ATSC) clear QAM tuners, as well as creating lists of favorite stations.^[49]

A Windows Media Center gadget is included as well.

Format support

In addition to media support in Vista, Windows 7 will add playback of media in MP4, MOV, 3GP, AVCHD, ADTS, M4A, and WTV multimedia containers, with native codecs for H.264, MPEG4-SP, ASP/DivX/Xvid, MJPEG, DV, AAC-LC, LPCM and AAC-HE.^[50]

Transcoding is integrated in the Windows Shell — the necessary conversion will happen automatically when a media file is dragged and dropped on the device icon.^{[citation needed]} A new inbox video encoder will support encoding to H.264 1-pass CBR Baseline profile up to 1.5 Mbit/s, 640x480pixels at 30 frame/s. Audio encoder will support Low complexity AAC stereo at 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate and 96, 128, 160 or 192 kbit/s bit rate.

Security

The Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.

A new User Account Control user interface has been introduced, which provides the ability to select four different levels of notifications.^[51] Geo-tracking will also be available in Windows 7. The feature will be disabled by default. When enabled the user will only have limited control as to which applications can track their location.^[52]

In Windows Vista, the Protected User-Mode Audio (PUMA) content protection facilities are only available to applications that are running in a Protected Media Path environment. Because only the Media Foundation application programming interface could interact with this environment, a media player application had to be designed to use Media Foundation. In Windows 7, this restriction is lifted.^[53] PUMA also incorporates stricter enforcement of "Copy Never" bits when using Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) copy protection over a S/PDIF connection, as well as with High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) over HDMI connections.

Biometrics

Windows 7 includes the new Windows Biometric Framework.^[54] This framework consists of a set of components that standardizes the use of fingerprint biometric devices. In prior releases of Microsoft Windows, biometric hardware device manufacturers are required to provide a complete stack of software to support their device, including device drivers, software development kits, and support applications. Microsoft noted in a whitepaper on the Windows Biometric Framework that the proliferation of these proprietary stacks resulted in incompatibility issues, compromised the quality and reliability of the system, and made servicing and maintenance more difficult. By incorporating the core biometric functionality into the operating system, Microsoft aims to bring biometric device support on par with other classes of devices.

A new Control Panel called Biometric Device Control Panel is included which provides an interface for deleting stored biometrics information, troubleshooting, and enabling or disabling the types of logins that are allowed using biometrics. Biometrics configuration can also be configured using Group Policy settings.

Networking

• DirectAccess, a VPN tunnel technology based on IPv6 and IPsec. DirectAccess requires domain-joined machines, Windows Server 2008 R2 on the DirectAccess server, at least Windows Server 2008 domain controllers and a PKI to issue authentication certificates.^[55]
• BranchCache, a branch-office cache system for files stored on central file servers. (c.f. Riverbed Technology)
• New Bluetooth networking stack
• NDIS 6.20^[56] (Network Driver Interface Specification)
• Native WWAN support, similar to native WiFi added in Vista.
• Wireless Hosted Network capabilities: The Windows 7 wireless LAN service supports two new functions - Virtual Wi-Fi, that would allow a single wireless network adapter to act like two client devices,^[57] or a software-based wireless access point (SoftAP) to act as both a wireless hotspot (infrastructure, not ad-hoc mode) and wireless client at the same time.^[58] This feature is not exposed through the GUI, however the Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter can be installed and enabled for wireless adapters with drivers that support a hosted network by using the netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow "ssid=<network SSID>" "key=<wlan security key>" keyusage=persistent|temporary command at an elevated command prompt.^[59] The wireless SoftAP can afterwards be started using the netsh wlan start hostednetwork command. Windows 7 also supports WPA2-PSK/AES security for the hosted network but DNS resolution for clients requires it to be used with Internet Connection Sharing or a similar feature.
• SMB 2.1, which includes minor performance enhancements over SMB2, such as a new opportunistic locking mechanism.^[60]
• RDP 7.0^[61]
• Background Intelligent Transfer Service 4.0^[62]

Firewall

Windows 7 adds support for multiple firewall profiles. The firewall in Windows Vista dynamically changes which network traffic is allowed or blocked based on the location of your computer (based on which network your computer is connected to). However, this approach falls short when your computer is connected to two or more networks at the same time (as in the case where you have both an Ethernet and a wireless interface in your computer). In this case, Windows Vista applies the profile that is more secure to all network connections on your computer. This is often not desirable, and Windows 7 fixes this by being able to apply a separate firewall profile to each network connection.

DNSSEC

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 introduce support for Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC),^[63] a set of specifications for securing certain kinds of information provided by the Domain Name System (DNS) as used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks. DNSSEC employs digital signatures to ensure the authenticity of DNS data received from a DNS server, which protect against DNS cache poisoning attacks.

Management features

Windows 7 contains new technologies and features based on Windows PowerShell 2.0:^[64]

• Windows Troubleshooting Platform
• Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment
• PowerShell Remoting

Other new features include:

• AppLocker (a set of Group Policy settings that evolved from Software Restriction Policies, to restrict which applications can run on a corporate network, including the ability to restrict based on the application's version number or publisher)
• Group Policy Preferences (also available as a download for Windows XP and Windows Vista).
• The Windows Automation API (also available as a download for Windows XP and Windows Vista).

Other features

• As opposed to the blank start-up screen in Windows Vista, Windows 7's start-up screen consists of an animation featuring four colored light balls (one red, one yellow, one green, and one blue). They twirl around for a few seconds and then join together to form a glowing Windows logo. This only occurs on displays with a vertical resolution of 768 pixels or higher, as the animation is 1024x768. Any screen with a resolution below this displays the same startup screen that Vista used.

• The Starter Edition of Windows 7 can run an unlimited number of applications, compared to only 3 in Windows Vista Starter. Microsoft had initially intended to ship Windows 7 Starter Edition with this limitation, but Microsoft announced after the release of the Release Candidate that it would not be in the final release.^[65]

• The XPS Essentials Pack is integrated into Windows 7.

• Calculator has been rewritten, with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion and date calculation. Calculator was also given a significant graphical facelift, a first since Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 in 1995.

• Many new items have been added to Control Panel including: ClearType Text Tuner, Desktop Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, Action Center, and Display.^[66]

• Paint and WordPad both have the new ribbon user interface. Paint supports opening (but not saving) transparent PNG and ICO files, touch screens and realistic brushes.

• Resource Monitor includes numerous new features, including an improved RAM usage display, display of TCP/IP ports being listened to, filtering processes using networking, filtering processes with disk activity, and listing and searching process handles (e.g. files used by a process) and loaded modules (files required by an executable file, e.g. DLL files).

• For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET based WCF web services)^[67], new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages,^[68] and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.^[69]

• A new font "Gabriola" is included.^[70] There is also Office Open XML and ODF support in WordPad.^[71]

• When a user right-clicks a disc image file, such as an ISO file, the user can click "Burn disc image" and the file will be copied to the disc of the user's choice. Support for image verification is included in the feature. In previous versions of Microsoft Windows, users had to install third-party software to perform disc image burning^[72].

• If an application crashes twice, Windows 7 will automatically attempt to apply a shim. If an application fails to install a similar self correcting fix, a tool that asks some questions about the application launches.^[73]

• Windows 7 includes a TIFF IFilter optional component that enables indexing of TIFF documents by first performing optical character recognition (OCR), thereby making it is possible to search through the scanned text in TIFF format.

• Windows 7 includes power-saving features, such as adaptive display brightness, which dims a laptop's display when the laptop has not been used for a while. Powercfg.exe /Energy generates an HTML report of the computer's power saving efficiency and checks which devices are preventing the computer from entering the sleep state. Windows 7 can individually suspend USB hubs and supports selective suspend for all in-box USB class drivers ^[74]

• Unlike Windows Vista, window borders, and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead they remain translucent.

• The Command Prompt now adheres to the current Windows theme, instead of showing controls from the Windows Classic theme.

• Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7.

• Windows 7 includes Windows Media Player 12, along with new codecs for playing formats such as H.264, MPEG4-SP, ASP/Divx/Xvid, MJPEG, DV, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC-LC), AA.^[75] Transcode support has also been added to the shell, with the ability to leverage new hardware acceleration and encryption chipsets.

• Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer 8.

• Users will also be able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.^[76]

• Windows XP Mode is a fully functioning copy of Windows XP Professional SP3 (32-bit) running in a virtual machine provided by Microsoft Virtual PC 2010 (as opposed to Hyper-V) running on top of Windows 7. Through the use of the RDP protocol, it allows applications incompatible with Windows 7 to be run on the underlying Windows XP virtual machine, but still to appear to be part of the Windows 7 desktop,^[77] thereby sharing the native Start Menu of Windows 7 as well as participating in file type associations. It is not distributed with Windows 7 media, but is offered as a free download to users of the Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions from Microsoft's web site. Users of Home Premium that want Windows XP functionality on their systems can download Virtual PC for free, but must provide their own licensed copy of Windows XP, and will not have the virtual-physical desktop integration offered by XP Mode. The XP Mode feature is intended for consumers not enterprises, as it offers no central management capabilities—Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (Med-V) will be targeted at the enterprise market.

• Native support for Hyper-V virtual machines through the inclusion of VMBus integration drivers.^[78]

See also

• Features removed from Windows 7
• Features new to Windows Vista
• Features new to Windows XP

References

External links

• What's New in Windows 7 for IT Pros (RC)
• Windows Support Phone Number - [1]