Features new to Windows 7

Some of the new features included in Windows 7 are advancements in touch, speech and handwriting recognition, support for , support for additional s, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 retains the Windows Aero graphical user interface and visual style introduced in its predecessor, Windows Vista, but many areas have seen enhancements. Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized while Windows Aero is active; instead, they remain translucent. Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to providing options to customize colors of window chrome and other aspects of the interface including the desktop background, icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes, the operating system also includes a native desktop slideshow feature. A new theme pack extension has been introduced, .themepack, which is essentially a collection of that consist of theme resources including background images, color preferences, desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes. The new theme extension simplifies sharing of themes and can also display desktop wallpapers via RSS feeds provided by the Windows RSS Platform. Microsoft provides additional themes for free through its website. The default theme in Windows 7 consists of a single desktop wallpaper named "Harmony" and the default desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound scheme introduced in Windows Vista; however, none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. New themes include Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, and Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed; although only the theme for a user's home country is displayed within the user interface, the files for all of these other country-specific themes are included in the operating system. All themes included in Windows 7—excluding the default theme—include six wallpaper images.