Microsoft Windows Vista has a whole lot of new and exciting stuff and some things that may be disturbing (at least when you’re starting with Vista), like the Folders in the \Users\%username\ folder new structure of the folders; X:\Documents and Settings has been shortened down to X:\Users which is good but then everything you are used to are changed (well almost anyway), My Documents is now called just Documents and this folder does not longer contains for example My Music, which is moved to a new location, one step up, with the new name Music.

There are also some new and interesting folders like the X:\Users\%username%\Links\ folder, se my previous article about that folder, AppData for application data and Searches for your saved Vista searches.

How do you as a developer use these folders, where do I store application data etc?

All of these questions are answered in a recent published great whitepaper from Microsoft called Namespace Usage Guidelines for the Windows Vista File System. It’s available for download as PDF or XPS.