Development of Windows Vista Development of Windows Vista Development of Windows Vista occurred over the span of five and a half years, starting in earnest in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and continuing until November 2006. Microsoft originally expected to ship the new version sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler") and Windows 7 (codenamed "Blackcomb" and "Vienna"). Vista's original codename, "Longhorn", was an allusion to this plan: While Whistler and Blackcomb are large ski resorts in British Columbia, Longhorn is the name of a bar between the two mountains that
Management features new to Windows Vista applications as part of the operating system itself. The setup process for Windows Vista has been completely rewritten and is now image-based. Setup is now based on Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) version 2.0, which, amongst other features, runs the entire setup process in a graphical environment, as opposed to the text-based environments of previous versions. Visually, the user interface resembles Windows Vista itself, using ClearType fonts and the Aero visual style, and enabling the use of a mouse. Prior to copying the setup image, users can graphically resize partitions. Support for loading third-party disk drivers has improved. Whereas Windows XP