My teammate Peg McNicol, product manager for Windows Vista Application Compatibility, wanted to share some news:
This past weekend the application compatibility team passed a major milestone as they posted the release candidate of the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0 on the web for download. ACT 5.0 RC is an all in one tool to help IT pros collect, analyze and share application compatibility information. I think that the cool thing about ACT is that it is based on requirements from our IT Pros and is intended to make their lives easier. It helps scope the work that needs to be done in an enterprise, to ensure they are strategically investing their time. By providing a single place that shows Microsoft's test results, alongside reports from the ISVs and other IT Pros, ACT 5.0 makes it simple to find the areas that need focus within the enterprise. ACT 5.0 RC also has compatibility evaluators to detect the common application compatibility issues that LOB and other applications might have on Windows Vista.
If you are an IT Pro responsible for deployment, you should go to the connect website and download the ACT product guide and the new toolkit. http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=81.
The team has done a ton of work and taken in much of the feedback from the beta version (if you were involved in the ACT 5.0 beta THANK YOU!) Some of the changes to look for:
New Vista Compatibility Evaluators (GINA, Session 0, Deprecated Components)
- Devices support
- Developer and Tester Tools - IE Test Tool, Standard User Analyzer, Setup Analysis
- Compatibility Administrator
- Support for upgrade
- Changes to UIA reporting
- Filtering and Custom Reports
We've also posted some screenshots of the new tool to the image gallery for you to check out: Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 Start Page and Sample Report.
- Peg