Recently in Windows Vista Category

IEBlog : IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

Many of you have asked how to run IE6 and IE7 in a side by side environment. As Chris Wilson blogged about early this year, it’s unfortunately not so easy to do. There are workarounds, but they are unsupported and don’t necessarily work the same way as IE6 or IE7 would work when installed properly. As Chris said, the best way to use multiple versions of IE on one machine is via virtualization. Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2004 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit to help facilitate your testing and development. The image is time bombed and will no longer function after April 1, 2007. We hope to continue to provide these images in the future as a service to web developers. I’m still not sure I’m thrilled with upgrading to IE on my primary box, but it might be the best of all worlds.

Cool slideshow on YouTube.com with screenshots of Windows from 1.01 to Vista.  You’ve come a long way, baby!

There’s an interesting thread at Channel 9 about why you should get excited about Vista.

It’s mostly about security. While there are some cool pretty features currently, most of the really cool stuff will be released in later versions.

Links mentioned:

Paul Thurrott
Adam Nathan

Most of the attention surrounding the upcoming Windows Vista has been on the sexy things like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) (formerly Avalon) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) (formerly Indigo). Vista goes much further and includes some new tools for IT departments. Anyone who’s dealt with imaging machines and Windows / Office Roll-outs know the pain involved and will appreciate some of these new technologies.

Vista comes with file-based disk imaging technology (see TechNet article for the specifics) It uses the new Microsoft Windows Imaging Format (WIM) image format. Unlike existing sector-based solutions, WIM is file-based. This change allows you to do some cool things.

Here are some of my favorites:

* “Hardware-agnostic.” You can use one image that will work on multiple computer hardware configurations. If you’re responsible for an environment with multiple computer versions and capabilities, this should banish the hassle of maintaining one image per configuration.
* Multiple image files in one WIM file. The WIM format supports multiple images in one actual file. You can have images with and without certain apps (e.g. Microsoft Access).
* Boot from the WIM file. You can specify one of the images as bootable and boot directly from that image.
* Compression and single instancing. If you have three images in the WIM file (image 1, image 2, image 3) that use file A, WIM stores file A once and points image 1, image 2, and image 3 to that single instance of file A.
* Edit the WIM file. As new patches or drivers are released, you can apply those changes to the WIM file (and the multiple image files within). That’s a heckuva lot easier than Window’s process of setting the image file, making sure the right settings are in the profile, using Sysprep, and then creating the image.
* Image partitions of any size. Sector-based imaging applications allow you to deploy the image to a partition that is at least the same size as the source partition. You can create an image on a 60 GB partition and deploy it to a partition of 6 GB.
* Non-destructive deployment. Applying the image doesn’t destroy the existing contents of the drive.
* Command line interface. The XImage application runs from the command line and is relatively straightforward.
* Script to your heart’s content. Use the scripting capabilities of Windows Vista to control the process.

There will probably be additional tools in the resource kit or other deployment packages.

Steve Ballmer’s said Microsoft will release high-end, higher-priced versions of Office and Windows starting with the next release (CNET News.com). Windows XP is an example of a “premium” version. There will also be an Enterprise edition released at some point (I’ve lost count of the number of Windows versions that might be available). Ballmer didn’t mention what features would be included in the premium versions.

There’s apparently an “Office Server that carries with it an additional fee for each computer that accesses the productivity software”. That would really allow Office to be a subscription service. In addition to the Office server, Ballmer’s said “we have servers people haven’t even written rumors about.”

I wonder, does the 64-bit version count as a “premium” edition?

Jerry Dunietz, an architect who worked on XPS, give a video demo of XPS. You can read more about it on Channel 9.

The product formerly code-named “Metro” is now the XML Paper Specification (XPS). You can read the Metro Specification and Reference Guide (ah, the good ol’ days when it was still “Metro”) and read about how it’s integrated in Windows Vista

To ensure cross-platform portability and device independence of XPS-based packages and XPS Documents, the XML Paper Specification is open and publicly available.

I love that. “So we can continue our quest of global domination, we’ll let you create documents using our specs and products that work with documents using our specs.”

It actually gets a little complex. There are both XPS Packages and XPS Documents. The “XPS packages are programmatically created and accessed through the packaging model.” Their physical format under Windows Vista is a ZIP file. XPS Packages also contain metadata, which “describes the content and use, and is discoverable (along with its package structure) through the XPS package APIs.” Sounds like a good place for “bad” (i.e. potentially sensitive) metadata to live.

The XPS Document is a “specific implementation of an XPS package designed to address the information worker’s requirements for distributing, archiving, rendering, and processing documents.” It is application independent and does not require the original program to view or print (like a PDF). It’s very, very integrated into Windows Vista:

Effectively, the XPS Document defines the default electronic paper object for Windows Vista, and is a native spool file format in the Windows Vista print architecture, as well as the native Windows Presentation Foundation print output.

(Windows Presentation Foundation was formerly known as “Avalon”.)

I don’t quite get this part:

The XPS Document uses a well-defined and fixed-format layout, including pagination for its content, while still allowing for forward- and backward-compatibility with versioning, or extensions for other value-added scenarios.

I’m fine with the “fixed-format layout” and pagination. I’m unsure what exactly the “versioning, or extensions for other value-added scenarios” entail. It’s backward-compatible with what exactly?

What’s lacking from all this is its impact on Office 12. Office 12 does not require Windows Vista to run. Will it be able to read/write XPS Documents?