* Windows Media Player applets, used to display embedded video files in Internet Explorer ( and other browsers that support the plugin )

* Formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio ( filename extension APE ), WavPack ( filename extension WV ), TTA, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, Apple Lossless ( filename extension m4a ), MPEG-4 SLS, MPEG-4 ALS, MPEG-4 DST, Windows Media Audio Lossless ( WMA Lossless ), and Shorten ( SHN ).

* Formats with lossy compression, such as MP3, Vorbis, Musepack, AAC, ATRAC and Windows Media Audio Lossy ( WMA lossy )).

* wma – the popular Windows Media Audio format owned by Microsoft.

Newer ones include Free Lossless Audio Codec ( FLAC ), Apple's Apple Lossless, MPEG-4 ALS, Microsoft's Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless ( WMA Lossless ), Monkey's Audio, and TTA.

Probably the most widely used formats for delivering video over the internet are MPEG4, Quicktime, Flash and Windows Media, while MPEG2 is used almost exclusively for DVDs, providing an exceptional image in minimal size but resulting in a high level of CPU consumption to decompress.

A number of features from Windows 98 were incorporated also, such as an improved Device Manager, Windows Media Player, and a revised DirectX that made it possible for the first time for many modern games to work on the NT kernel.

** Windows XP Home Edition N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling

** Windows XP Professional N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling

* Windows XP Media Center Edition ( MCE ), released in October 2002 for desktops and notebooks with an emphasis on home entertainment.

Contained all features offered in Windows XP Professional and the Windows Media Center.

Subsequent versions are the same but have an updated Windows Media Center.

** Windows XP Media Center Edition 2003

** Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004

** Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, released on 12 October 2004.

Vista also features new graphics features, the Windows Aero GUI, new applications ( such as Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker and some new games including Chess, Mahjong, and Purble Place ), Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and a large number of underlying architectural changes.

In some countries ( Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland ), there are other editions that lack some features such as Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and Internet Explorer called names such as " Windows 7 N ."

Some, like VirtualBox and VMware Player run on Windows and Linux hosts and can run many other operating systems.

Microsoft developed a media player known as ActiveMovie in 1995 that allowed streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the precursor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6. 4 in 1999.

* Windows Media Player ( Playlist Files )

As mentioned, SMIL is not yet native to web browsers, so in order to put SMIL in a web page, one must embed it and open it in a plug-in such as Apple's QuickTime or Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

This halftime show was sponsored by Victoria's Secret and available exclusively in Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player also does not natively support Vorbis ; however, DirectShow filters exist to decode Vorbis in Windows Media Player and other Windows multimedia players that support DirectShow.

All terrain tiles, some landscape features, all monsters and objects, and some spell / effect graphics take the form of Windows 3. 1 icons.

This version was the precursor to the multimedia features available in Windows 3. 1 and later, and was part of Microsoft's specification for the Multimedia PC.

The features listed above and growing market support from application software developers made Windows 3. 0 wildly successful, selling around 10 million copies in the two years before the release of version 3. 1.

However, these same features made Windows NT perfect for the LAN server market ( which in 1993 was experiencing a rapid boom, as office networking was becoming common ).

* Windows 95 C-( OSR2. 5 ) included all the above features, plus IE 4. 0.

Major new features included the new Explorer shell from Windows 95, scalability and feature improvements to the core architecture, kernel, USER32, COM and MSRPC.

Amongst Windows 2000's most significant new features was Active Directory, a near-complete replacement of the NT 4. 0 Windows Server domain model, which built on industry-standard technologies like DNS, LDAP, and Kerberos to connect machines to one another.

In September 2000, Microsoft introduced Windows Me ( Millennium Edition ), which upgraded Windows 98 with enhanced multimedia and Internet features from Windows 2000.

Many of the new features were available from the Windows Update site as updates for older Windows versions ( System Restore and Windows Movie Maker were exceptions ).

* Windows XP Home Edition, for home desktops and laptops-lacked features such as joining Active Directory Domain, Remote Desktop Server and Internet Information Services Server.

* Windows XP Professional, for business and power users contained all features in Home Edition.

It is roughly analogous to Windows XP Professional in features.

On 25 April 2003 Microsoft launched Windows Server 2003, a notable update to Windows 2000 Server encompassing many new security features, a new " Manage Your Server " wizard that simplifies configuring a machine for specific roles, and improved performance.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is based on the Windows Server 2003 codebase ; with the server features removed and client features added.

ClearType is also an integrated component of the Windows Presentation Foundation text-rendering engine.

KDE () is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems.

Based on the same Gecko layout engine as Mozilla Firefox, K-Meleon uses native Windows application programming interface ( API ) to create the user interface, instead of using Mozilla's cross-platform XML User Interface Language ( XUL ) layer, and as a result, is tightly integrated into the look and feel of the Windows desktop ; this approach is similar to that of Galeon and Epiphany ( for the GNOME desktop ), and Camino ( for Mac OS X ).

The integrated media player in Windows Explorer playing a MIDI sequence.

Windows 2000 Explorer introduces customizable Windows Explorer toolbars, auto-complete in Windows Explorer address bar and Run box, advanced file type association features, displaying comments in shortcuts as tooltips, extensible columns in Details view ( IColumnProvider interface ), icon overlays, integrated search pane in Windows Explorer, sort by name function for menus, and Places bar in common dialogs for Open and Save.

Video for Windows was first available as a free add-on to Windows 3. 1, and later integrated into Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. 0.

Windows Media Player supports full media management, via the integrated media library introduced first in version 7, which offers cataloguing and searching of media and viewing media metadata.

DVD playback features minus the necessary decoders were integrated into Windows Media Player 8 for Windows XP.

Mini-mode was introduced as a shell player powertoy for Windows Media Player 8 in Windows XP and integrated later into WMP 9 Series.

With version 11 of Windows Media Player, Media Sharing was integrated and allows content ( Music, Pictures, Video ) to be streamed to and from Universal Plug and Play ( UPnP ) AV enabled devices such as the PS3, Xbox 360, and Roku SoundBridge.

With Microsoft Windows 95, TAPI was integrated into the operating system.

Though Liberty BASIC has its share of limitations in its design for advanced programming, it makes a credible and very usable introductory integrated development environment, IDE, for moderate to advanced users of Windows and OS / 2.

PureBasic is a commercially distributed procedural computer programming language and integrated development environment based on BASIC and developed by Fantaisie Software for Windows 32 / 64-bit, Linux 32 / 64-bit, and Mac OS X.