I know that many don’t seem to appreciate Vista, but I like it. It does bring a few fundamentally revolutionary concepts (at least for Windows) like 3D composited desktop and is in general simply a newer better Windows.

The cool thing I’d like to mention today is one of those small things that make your life easier. Nothing earth shattering, but nice nevertheless.

If an app is running on a different desktop than the logged in user, it should not display any kind of dialogs or message boxes. The reason is simple – you can’ see them! The whole point of a message box is to inform the interactive user about something.

If Vista notices that an app did in fact do this, it notifies you and asks you if you’d like to see the message. In my case, avast! had problems downloading the updates and for some reason wanted to let me know, but on a different desktop. Vista kindly switched me to the other desktop so I can read and dismiss the dialog/message box. I’m not sure if the dialog was modal, but if it was and I wasn’t able to see (and dismiss) it, the app would have stayed stuck forever.