* 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.

However, this detail is left to the design of an X server implementation and is not universal ; for example, X server implementations for Windows and Macintosh typically do not provide these keyboard shortcuts.

For example, in Microsoft Windows the Native API is a poorly documented application programming interface specific for Windows NT kernel, which can be used to give access to some kernel functions, which cannot be directly accessed through a more universal Windows API.

SanDisk media players have near universal support for Windows Media DRM and rely almost exclusively on variants of the copy-protection capable Secure Digital format for removable storage.

* ASIO4ALL — an independent universal ASIO driver for Windows that brings ASIO support to users of virtually all consumer-grade soundcards and integrated audio chipsets.

* ASIO2KS — yet another independent universal ASIO driver for Windows.

The mouse right-click was used for access to Forms and Reports properties, inspired by the Xerox Alto and Smalltalk, in a way now almost universal to Windows programs.

For each extension, Windows Open Services Architecture defines an API and an SPI, as well as a universal interface ( usually placed in a single DLL ) that both comply to.

The Mac version of the games are universal binary, which makes them compatible with Intel Core Duo-based Macs, making this one of the few major Windows / Mac hybrids that will work on Intel Macs.

Multi-protocol ( universal ) instant messaging for AOL, Facebook, Google Talk, iChat, ICQ, XMPP ( Jabber ), MySpace, Windows Live Messenger ( MSN ), and Yahoo!

Instead of each program having its own text configuration files, with a variety of formats, Elektra tries to provide a universal, hierarchical, fast and consistent namespace and infrastructure to access configuration parameters through a key-value pair mechanism inspired by the Windows Registry.