Desktop Window Manager

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The Desktop Window Manager is a windowing system introduced Windows Vista that enables the Windows Aero user interface. Users will need to have a DirectX 9 capable video card to be able to use the Desktop Window Manager. Windows Aero is not available on Windows Vista Home Basic edition, and the Desktop Window Manager is not included at all with the Starter edition.

The Desktop Window Manager is similar to Quartz Compositor in Mac OS X in that applications do not draw directly to screen, but instead draw to off-screen buffers that are then composited by the window manager and displayed on-screen. This allows the window manager to easily create a number of on-screen effects such as the current one displayed in Vista betas, where the borders of application windows are translucent, showing parts of the windows lying beneath them, or the stacking effect displayed when users switch between applications.

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