This is not a Vista review.

This is simply a "wow, it really is pretty up close" note.

After a week on Vista, I continue to be amazed by the skills people in the MS interface design (both Vista and Office) teams have. Vista isn't just pretty, it's downright gorgeous. And not on a "I'm a Photoshop pro, respect my authority!" level either. Nope, it's down to a pixel level. The amount of precision that's gone into small things like icons, toolbars and buttons is just plain astounding. Every little thing is superbly crafted.

Respect.

And so, my dear reader, I introduce to you my new vision for d2.

It's all about the text, which means it's all about the content. Typefaces are in my opinion a highly underrated but extremely powerful element in communication. I just love the way the New York Times or even Wall Street Journal feels (the paper versions specifically, although NYTIMES.com does rock). There's just something about well-designed typefaces and typeface choices that tickles my fancy…

On a technical note: If you're running Vista or Office 2007, you'll see most of the content rendered in the beautiful Cambria, currently one of my fave fonts. If not, you'll see good old Georgia, and failing that Times New Roman, which IMHO is highly underrated and unfairly hated - mainly because idiots who don't know how to change default fonts have given us badly rendered pages using Times for years, causing a Pavlovian effect. But then again, that's just my opinion (Cambria is designed to be used with the peerless ClearType - if you're running an LCD monitor on XP or Vista, do yourself a favour and check whether it's switched on. You'll do yourself a world of favour in increasing readability in all your applications).

Happy 2007 (sorry it's a bit late)!