Attended a Windows Vista event at Microsoft TVP last night. The guy doing the demos kept mentioning his blog, and that all the stuff that he was showing us is listed there.
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/
Things to look out for in Windows Vista are
1. The new UAC (User account control – look out for windows registry virtualization it can mean that you miss the fact that your old applications aren’t actually writing to the real registry key!),
2. Using the Windows SDK stuff to make your applications look more up to date. Think the main class library he was using was called VistaBridge (http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006/06/vistabridge_12.html). (Note the folder that the CrossTechnologySamples.zip he refers to in his blog is now C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Samples). You can now download the SDK from the official download site at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en.
3. RSS Api (Daniel thinks that enough people adopting this technology could forge the future for inter application communication – i.e. think of your RSS content containing serialized application data rather than just news feeds all the time)
4. Power management for your applications (more important as people start using more mobile devices like tablet PCs etc)
5. Windows gadgets (sidebar and more impressive Sideshow, which can run on the new .NET Micro framework (not compact framework), kind of like the use of the second screen on one of those flip top mobile phones. In the marketing video they had laptops with small lcd screens embedded on the laptop monitor lids showing cached outlook reminder content).
6. Also a new UX directive called AERO that they’re plugging to make user experience a lot clearer for the grannies out there who are technophobes.
Finally to make your applications look really cool, use windows glass. Instructions on how to download a video that shows how to do this is here http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006/07/my-nuggets-are-up.html but probably best you get a new laptop first, as you need a fairly beefy machine and graphics card to make it all run smoothly.