Features new to Windows 7


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, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

Shell and user interface

Windows 7 retains the Windows Aero graphical user interface and visual style introduced in its predecessor, Windows Vista, but many areas have seen enhancements. Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized while Windows Aero is active; instead, they remain translucent.

Desktop

Themes

Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to providing options to customize colors of window chrome and other aspects of the interface including the desktop background, icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes, the operating system also includes a native [|desktop slideshow] feature. A new theme pack extension has been introduced, .themepack, which is essentially a collection of cabinet files that consist of theme resources including background images, color preferences, desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes. The new theme extension simplifies sharing of themes and can also display desktop wallpapers via RSS feeds provided by the Windows RSS Platform. Microsoft provides additional themes for free through its website.
The default theme in Windows 7 consists of a single desktop wallpaper named "Harmony" and the default desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound scheme introduced in Windows Vista; however, none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. New themes include Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, and Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed; although only the theme for a user's home country is displayed within the user interface, the files for all of these other country-specific themes are included in the operating system. All themes included in Windows 7—excluding the default theme—include six wallpaper images. A number of new sound schemes have also been introduced: Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savana, and Sonata. Themes may introduce their own custom sounds, which can be used with others themes as well.

Desktop Slideshow

Windows 7 introduces a desktop slideshow feature that periodically changes the desktop wallpaper based on a user-defined interval; the change is accompanied by a smooth fade transition with a duration that can be customized via the Windows Registry. The desktop slideshow feature supports local images and images obtained via RSS.

Gadgets

With Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the Windows Sidebar to host Microsoft Gadgets that displayed details such as feeds and sports scores; the gadgets could optionally be placed on the Windows desktop. With Windows 7, gadgets can still be placed on the Windows desktop, but the Windows Sidebar itself has been removed, and the platform has been renamed as Windows Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets are more closely integrated with Windows Explorer, but the gadgets themselves continue to operate in a single sidebar.exe process. New features for gadgets include:
  • A context menu option on the desktop to access the Gadgets Gallery to add, display, or uninstall gadgets is now available
  • Gadgets that display details from online sources can now also display content that has been cached
  • High DPI support
  • Larger controls designed for touch-based interaction
  • Rearrangement capabilities automatically arrange gadgets based on their proximity with other gadgets
  • When gadgets are displayed on the desktop, there is a context menu option to display or hide them; hiding gadgets can result in power savings
Windows 7 also introduces a single new gadget, one for Windows Media Center that displays links to the various sections of its interface.

Branding and customization

For original equipment manufacturers and enterprises, Windows 7 natively supports the ability to customize the wallpaper that is displayed during user login. Because the settings to change the wallpaper are available via the Windows Registry, users can also customize this wallpaper. Options to customize the appearance of interface lighting and shadows are also available.

Windows Explorer

Libraries

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 supports file libraries that aggregate 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. The libraries hide the actual location the file is stored in. 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. The Public folder also contains a hidden Recorded TV library that appears in the Windows Explorer sidepane when TV is set up in Media Center for the first time.
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, 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, or on another device that implements the MS-WSP remote query protocol.

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 is provided as an .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.

Miscellaneous Shell enhancements

Windows Explorer has received numerous minor enhancements that improve its overall functionality. The address bar and search box can be resized. The Command Bar features the New Folder command and a visible interface option to enable the Preview Pane. A new Content icon view mode is added, which shows metadata and thumbnails. The List icon view mode provides more space between items than in Windows Vista. Storage capacity indicators for hard disks introduced in Windows Vista are now also shown for removable storage devices. File types for which new iFilters or Property Handlers are installed are reindexed by Windows Search by default.
The Navigation Pane includes a new Favorites location, which serves as the replacement for the Favorite Links functionality of the interface in Windows Vista, and newly created Saved Searches are automatically pinned to this location.
There is a new Share With button on the Command Bar that allows users to share the currently viewed folder or currently selected item with people in a homegroup with either read permissions or with both read and write permissions, or with specific people, which opens the Sharing Wizard introduced in Windows Vista; a new Nobody sharing option prevents the selected folder or item from being shared, and all items that are excluded in this manner feature a new padlock overlay icon.
Previously, adding submenus to Shell context menus or customizing the context menu's behavior for a certain folder was only possible by installing a form of plug-in known as Shell extensions. In Windows 7, however, users can edit the Windows Registry or configuration files. Additionally, a new Shell API was introduced designed to simplify the writing of context menu shell extensions by software developers.
Windows 7 includes native support for burning ISO files. The functionality is available when a user selects the Burn disc image option within the context menu of an ISO file. In previous versions of Windows, users were required to install third-party software to burn ISO images.