Jeff Atwood has a fun post explaining how much more quickly he finds things now that he can once again just type the names of programs. It's so true. Instead of clicking Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word Whatever, with the attendant pauses while the menus come up and the pauses while I desparately scan the huge list looking for the thing I know has to be there somewhere, it's just press the Windows key and type word, then press enter. Or perhaps type w if I'm lucky enough. The search is blazing fast and there's the application I want, or the file I want, or the control panel sub-thingy that has a new name now so I can't see it. Ah, typing. I never really gave up on typing. And now it's once again one of the main ways we'll interact with the operating system.

And not just because of the way cool search thing. There's the UAC aspect to this too. Open yourself an elevated command prompt, and everything you launch from that command prompt will be elevated -- no manifest, no right-click Run As Administrator, just run your utility so you can do whatever administrative tasks you need to do in relative peace. Small price to pay: you have to type the names of those apps (possibly with their full paths) into the command prompt.

And that's not the only deja vu I get as a Vista user and developer. Does anyone remember making Windows applications before, say WinForms? OK, before VB or before MFC? Before there was a framework that gave you an object called Button that had a property called Text or Caption or the like, how did you set the text on a button? You sent it a Windows message (WM_SETTEXT) with a parameter of "Save" or whatever you wanted.  Well you don't have to do that any longer, but how do you arrange for the shield icon to appear on a button? (It's a convention that if clicking a button is going to pop up an elevation consent dialog, you put the shield on the button.) By sending it a BCM_SETSHIELD message, of course!

The longer you've been programming, the less jarring these things are. Soon enough the tools will catch up and it will be all drag-drop, set properties etc. If that's all you've ever known, you might feel like Vista has dropped you through the looking glass. But if you have some memories of the old days, you're going to be on more solid ground. And you probably still type really fast.

Kate