Inside Windows Vista Build 5219

Windows Vista is starting to look more appealing. During our hands-on testing of Vista build 5219, which Microsoft is handing out this week at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, we were able to try out a number of new features and observe some slick-looking interface enhancements. Build 5219 takes advantage of WPF (Windows Presentation Framework, formerly known as Avalon) to provide visual cues that make it easier to navigate between multiple open applications—and, frankly, more fun. It expands the search box embedded in the Start menu to let you kick off a search of the entire PC or of the Internet. And it enhances a number of security and administrative features and turns on User Account Protection by default.