As development progressed, it assimilated many of Blackcomb's features and was repositioned as a major Windows release.
It was intended as a small upgrade to bridge the gap between XP and the next major Windows version, codenamed Blackcomb. Microsoft began developing Vista under the codename 'Longhorn' in 2001, shortly before the release of XP. Vista succeeded Windows XP (2001) at the time, the five-year gap between the two was the longest time span between successive Windows releases. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and became generally available on January 30, 2007, on the Windows Marketplace, the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform. Windows Vista is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system.
