One of the most important new features in Microsoft's next version of Windows (code-named Longhorn) is a technology code-named Avalon.

What is Avalon? Avalon is the new graphics engine for the Longhorn desktop environment. The key feature being the compositer.  It will be the part the delivers a host of new visual effects to Windows. One important feature will be its ability to provide high quality scaling. As monitor resolution increases, the desire for clean, higher DPI displays increases.

Right now, users are stuck with 96 dots per inch (DPI). If you switch to large fonts, apps get broken.  Ideally, what you want is the user to be able to run at say 3000 x 2000 with the text and other elements being increadily crisp and large still.  And to do that, you need to have larger fonts (otherwise everything looks tiny).  And you want to do that in a way that won't break existing apps and works consistently from program to program.

Avalon also will provide deveopers (and Microsoft) with a whole new tool kit of ways to display information and windows on the screen. It is Avalon, more than almost any other part of Longhorn, that we at WinCustomize will be keeping a close eye on.