Lubo Blagoev's Blog

As a software developer you should have noticed that Windows Vista requires special attention. Even if you are building application targeted for Windows XP you should always test your code against the new operating system since it is very likely that your app will be used on Vista. That's why you should do the effort and read the Windows Vista Developer Guidelines:

• User Experience Articles
• Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines
• Windows Vista Developer Story

Great articles, really great. I can't never express enough my feelings when I read these very well prepared, highly detailed articles for Windows development. This is the reason why I am a Microsoft Windows Developer and that I am very excited about it. Having such articles in your hands simplifies things, makes your job easier and produces beautiful results.

If you don't have the time and desire to read all of them you can always come back later and use them as reference in your work. Still I highly recommend reading the Windows Vista Application Development Requirements for User Account Control Compatibility. Taking into account the User Account Control is mandatory for any Windows Vista development. UAC is one of the most discussed feature of Vista.

Recently I was reading through the UAC compatibility guidelines and I noticed one thing. An application is blocked if it requires elevation on user logon.

Elevations are blocked in the User's Logon Path

Applications that start when the user logs on and require elevation are now blocked in the logon path. Without blocking applications from prompting for elevation in the user's log on path, both standard users and administrators would have to respond to a User Account Control dialog box on every log on. Windows Vista notifies the user if an application has been blocked by placing an icon in the system tray. The user can then right-click this icon to run applications that were blocked from prompting for elevation as the user logged on. The user can manage which startup applications are disabled or removed from this list by double-clicking on the tray icon.

If you ever want to start an application with elevated privileges at logon you should use Vista's Task Scheduler. In the UAC article there is a sample which shows how to do that programmatically. Manually scheduling an application is very simple. If you select the checkbox labeled Run with highest privileges, Task Scheduler will run the task using an elevated privileges token rather than a least privileges (UAC) token. This way you will not even receive prompt for consent since Task Scheduler is already elevated.

Recently I have seen couple of articles on the web about how user unfriendly is Windows Vista. This is what provoked me to write about it here. I don't agree with that and that's why I will not provide links to them cause I don't want to increase their Page Rank :)

Now most of these articles are written by journalists that are computer educated people that I don't think are the most common user type that this OS is used by. This doesn't make their opinion absolute. As said they have the knowledge and they probably are the most OS-behavior-sensitive user group that require some attention. So I just wanted to share my thoughts about these passionate negative reviews.

What makes me impression is how these people are used to Windows XP. They always compare feature by feature the new Vista with the "good" old XP. They sometimes compare it with some other Linux like OSes that by default are better than Windows :). Well I think this is the most bad approach to evaluate a new OS. There are many complaints that many things are different in the look and feel, in the behavior, in the minimum hardware requirement etc. While I agree that many of these little things count this doesn't make Windows Vista unfriendly. In fact when writing about it at least write why the user needs to move as quickly as possible to the new OS. All these different things that are bellow the fancy UI (Security, File System, Stability, Performance) makes the new OS the future and there is no going back. I will not go into more details since this will become another useless post about the old versus the new. What I will say is The Queen is dead... long live the King. Change and adopt. That's life.

So let me share some very "unfriendly" thinks about Windows Vista.

What I found yesterday is a nice information regarding daylight savings. .

Also I am able to add two additional clocks so I am able to track all the Webcasts that I am going to hook up to. And if you don't know it you can click on the month title and "ride the century" to find a specific date

How user unfriendly is that!