Is Vista worth considering when developing for XP?

Question

Quite a few comments to answers in a different post gave me the impression that a lot of things regarding standard folders (%APPDATA%; %TEMP%) in Vista are different from XP, which should of course be taken into account when developping software that will have to run under Vista at some point.

But in my company, I do not see that happen in this decade, and maybe not in the next either. I mean, the central IT deployed SP2 only 8 months ago, and any question about SP3 is met with disregard (well, if you're lucky...)

So what is your advice? Should I rewrite two modules in my current project to make them ready for Vista, or should I not bother about it at all, unitl it is really needed?

Answer 1

Is your company going to upgrade to vista at all? A lot of companies are ignoring vista and planning to Upgrade to the next windows when it comes out in the hopes that it will suck less than vista. If this is the case, it would be a complete waste of time. Who knows what will change for the next version of windows. It is better to rewrite once for the new windows than to rewrite once for vista and then again for the next windows.

Answer 2

Make them Vista-ready, if only for the fact that Windows 7 will have the same changes. Better to future-proof now when you have the chance, than later when time is critical.

Answer 3

No need to hurry. So far it is not critical, and who nows what next windows would look like.

Answer 4

Personally, I'd have a quick look at the effort level of what it would take to enable "Vista Support" in your application.

If the effort levels are acceptable based on the allotted time to make changes in your project then it's good to account for the future in any design.

You know your implementation better than anyone!

We've had some issues in-house here with shortcuts and such as they were generated in an older installation suite. It's the little things that we are currently addressing in getting our Vista Support fully up and running. I'm sure there will be some "unforeseen" obstacles you will come across as well.

Best of luck!

Answer 5

If you planning on upgrading your software for vista, check this doc.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/e/4/8e4c929d-679a-4238-8c21-2dcc8ed1f35c/Windows%20Vista%20Software%20Logo%20Spec%201.1.doc

Answer 6

Since you can't foresee an OS upgrade in the near future, don't worry too much about it. You should, however, keep the potential for an OS upgrade in mind whenever you're changing code. If anything is OS-specific in a section of code when you make changes, tweak it so that it is either OS-independent or easy to locate and modify later to make it OS-independent (depending on how long it would take to update it).

If you get into a situation where you're just tackling lesser issues, consider specifically aiming your fixes towards areas that you know (or suspect might) have code that would need to be adjusted if your company upgraded to Vista or Windows 7.

Answer 7

Don't bother, Windows 7 is coming out relatively soon, you'd be best off waiting to see what changes they make to support that! Last thing you want is to spend time fixing things for Vista..... and then fixing them all over again for Windows 7.

Answer 8

The big thing for supporting Vista in most desktop apps is to use use references like your $APPDATA% rather than hard-coding paths. That should resolve any changed folder locations, And don't do anything that requires write access in you're program's install folder.

What's interesting is that these rules are true for XP, too. It's just that in the past it was a lot easier to get away with breaking them.