Microsoft has sought to "rescue" certain types of programs for use in Windows 7 that were rendered incompatible by the move to Vista.
Previously, the rule of thumb was that if a program runs in Vista, it will run in Windows 7 and, in general, programs that will not run in Vista will also fail to work in Windows 7.
"Along with the core tenet of ensuring that any application that worked on Windows Vista also works on Windows 7, we have a stretch goal to 'raise the bar' and make applications work on Windows 7 that never worked on Windows Vista," Microsoft said in a blog posting on Monday.
Microsoft said that to date it has managed to take around 30 international applications that were broken in Vista and make them work in Windows 7. Among the "rescued" titles are things such as the Spanish-language Ikea Home Kitchen Planner, a German version of QuickTime and the Arabic program Khalifa Cartoon Characters Creator.
"This means that Windows 7 will have higher application compatibility than Windows Vista," Microsoft said. Microsoft's blog lists a host of non-English applications that have been "rescued".
Application compatibility has always been a key benchmark for new Windows releases, and one of the knock-on effects for Vista was the significant number of software and hardware titles that did not work at launch.
Windows 7 is likely to have less of an incompatibility issue, in part because of Microsoft's work, but also because it is making fewer significant changes to things such as the driver model and other issues that tend to affect compatibility. The company also took other steps, such as making Windows 7 technically version 6.1 of Windows, in an effort to try to make the software more likely to run with older software.
Still, while most Vista-compatible applications should run without difficulty in Windows 7, Microsoft did note that there are always applications that run very close to the operating system — things such as security software — that have to be tweaked for a new version. That will also be the case this time around, Microsoft said.
