Windows Vista Annoyances

The Vista Desktop—Now with Aero!

Once you’ve recovered from the excitement of the Welcome Center, you get your first glimpse of the full Vista desktop.

All of the usual Windows landmarks are here—the Start menu, taskbar, and Recycle Bin—but they’ve been given a drastic cosmetic overhaul since the last version of Windows (Figure 2-2). For example:

Figure 2-2. There’s a new desktop picture in Vista—Microsoft evidently endured one Teletubbies joke too many during the Windows XP era—and a glowing, more modern look called Aero. The only truly new element is the Sidebar, the stack of small floating windows that appears at the right side of the screen. (Chapter 6 covers the Sidebar in detail.)

• ▸ The edges of windows are extra thick (for easier targeting with your mouse). Parts of the Start menu and window edges are transparent. Windows and dialog boxes cast subtle shadows on the background, as though they’re floating.

• ▸ A new, bigger, more modern font is used for menus and labels.

• ▸ When you point to a window button without clicking, the button “lights up.” The Minimize and Maximize buttons glow blue; the Close button glows red.

• ▸ The default button in a dialog box—the one Microsoft thinks you really want, like Save or Print—pulses gently, using fading color intensity to draw your eye.

• ▸ Little animations liven up the works, especially when you minimize, maximize, or close a window.

Aero isn’t just ...