Windows Aero (sometimes referred to as Aero Glass) represents a significant change in the Windows interface. It adds a variety of new features, including transparent windows, live Taskbar thumbnails, and Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D, some of which are designed to make it easier to navigate and find useful information (live Taskbar thumbnails and Windows Flip 3D) and others that are designed to make the overall experience more visually pleasing (transparent windows and animation).

You don't have to run Windows Aero when you run Windows Vista; you can run Windows Classic, Basic, or Standard instead. But the vast majority of people will use Windows Aero. Following are its primary features:

• The Start menu and parts of windows are transparent. In windows, the title bar and window borders are transparent, as are the edges of dialog boxes.

• Windows and dialog boxes have drop shadows.

• When you hover your mouse over a button in a window, the button illuminates so that you know the button has the focus. The Minimize and Maximize buttons glow blue, and the Close button glows red.

• Windows actions are subtly animated. When you minimize a window, you can watch it "whoosh" down to the Taskbar. Similarly, a window "whooshes" back up when you maximize it. When you close a window, it fades from view instead of suddenly vanishing.

• Windows Aero displays a thumbnail of the contents of any window on the Taskbar when the mouse hovers over the window. It also shows the name of the application and open file.

• With Windows Aero, there is a new way to switch among your windowsWindows Flip and Windows Flip 3D. Both let you see thumbnails of your windows as you switch among them, with Windows Flip showing them side by side and Windows Flip 3D showing them stacked in three dimensions. You activate Windows Flip by using Alt-Tab, and Windows Flip 3D works by using the Windows logo key-Tab combination.

Notes

• Windows Aero has higher-end hardware requirements than previous versions of Windows and is not available in Windows Vista Basic, although it is available in all the other versions of Windows Vista. But even if you have a version of Windows Vista that includes Windows Aero, that doesn't mean you can run Windows Aero, because your PC will still need to meet those hardware requirements. In order to run it, you'll need a PC with a 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor; 1 GB of RAM; and a DirectX 9-capable graphics processor that supports WDDM, 32 bits per pixel, and Pixel Shader 2.0, and has a minimum of 128 MB of memory.

• Windows Aero uses the new WDDM and the new Desktop Compositing Engine (DCE). One significant benefit of DCE is that it eliminates the display issues that sometimes happened with previous versions of Windows when you dragged a window on your desktopfor example, the window leaving traces of itself as you drag.

• You can turn off transparent effects, or customize them by changing the color and transparency of windows. Choose Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Personalization -> Window Color and Appearance.