** With the introduction of Windows 7 ( Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions ), Windows XP Mode enables full compatibility with older programs supported under Windows XP via Microsoft Virtual PC.

* Enabling International Support in Windows XP / Server 2003 Family, a Microsoft tutorial on how to install input methods on Windows XP.

Context menus in Windows XP are customizable by third-party software.

For example, Windows XP does this when sorting file names.

ClearType was later introduced as an operating system feature in Windows XP, where it was kept turned off by default.

ClearType in Windows XP currently supports the RGB and BGR sub pixel structures.

The best option for users of Windows XP having rotated LCD displays ( Tablet PCs or swivel-stand LCD displays ) is using regular anti-aliasing, or switching off font-smoothing altogether.

Duke Nukem 3D has been ported to run on modern Microsoft Windows variants including Windows XP and Windows 7.

FCPLib supports Windows NT / 2K / XP, Debian, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS X.

In hindsight, Cairo was a much more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT and Chicago would not be unified until Windows XP — albeit Windows 2000, oriented to business, had already unified most of the system ’ s bolts and gears, it was XP that was sold to home consumers like Windows 95 and came to be viewed as the final unified OS.

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 ClearType is turned on by default.

In Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions, Internet Explorer 7 and later versions and Windows Live Messenger, ClearType is also turned on by default, even if it is not enabled throughout the operating system.

Version 0. 7. 5 also shipped with a new version of the Windows installer.

Support for SNI is available since Firefox 2, Opera 8, Safari 2. 1, Google Chrome 6, and Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista.

Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS ; secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and MS DOS 7 would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 enhanced mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory.

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.

Windows 7 Desktop

Windows 7 is the current major release after Windows Vista and was released to manufacturing on 22 July 2009, and reached general retail availability on 22 October 2009.

Windows 7 has the version number NT 6. 1.

Some features of Windows 7 are faster booting, Device Stage, Windows PowerShell, less obtrusive User Account Control, multi-touch, and improved window management.

Features included with Windows Vista and not in Windows 7 include the sidebar ( although gadgets remain ) and several programs that were removed in favor of downloading their Windows Live counterparts.

* A Windows Algol Algol running on Vista win64 system by Marcel van der Veer, Algol 68 Genie works on normal Windows up through the latest.

Microsoft dropped support for APM in Windows Vista.

* Boot Configuration Data, a computing term for the boot loader of Windows Vista

* Microsoft Windows contains application compatibility shims to make the platform compatible with most software from earlier 32-bit and 16-bit versions ( e. g. Civilization ( circa 1991, designed for Windows 3. 0 ) running on Windows Vista ).

Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system also includes content-control software.

Those games can be played on all major browsers and they can also be ported to Widgets for Mac OS X and Gadgets for Windows Vista, which are based on DHTML code.

* Windows Display Driver Model ( WDDM ) – the graphic display driver architecture for Windows Vista

* CNG API in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 with managed wrappers for CNG in. NET Framework 3. 5

Newer versions of popular browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer on Windows Vista implement the Online Certificate Status Protocol ( OCSP ) to verify that this is not the case.

Microsoft announced that they have discontinued the separate release of WinFS for Windows XP and Windows Vista and will gradually incorporate the technologies developed for WinFS in other products and technologies, notably Microsoft SQL Server.

Windows XP lasted longer as Microsoft's flagship operating system than any other version of Windows, from 25 October 2001 to 30 January 2007 when it was succeeded by Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Desktop

Windows Vista has the Aero theme

Windows Vista was released on 8 November 2006 to business customers, consumer versions following on 30 January 2007.

As a 16 bit application, the program will not run natively under 64 bit versions of the Windows operating system.

The aim of WinFLP is to give companies a viable upgrade option for older PCs that are running Windows 95, 98, and Me that will be supported with patches and updates for the next several years.

The desktop interface is also present for running windowed applications, although Windows RT will not run any desktop applications not included in the system.

Windows 8 will ship with three editions and one edition called Windows RT will only be pre-installed on ARM tablets.

Microsoft has said that Windows Server 2012 was available on 4 September 2012 and Windows 8 will be available on October 26, 2012.

Empirical data suggest that Windows ( using the Windows sleep timer which accepts millisecond sleep times ) will schedule on a 1024 Hz clock and will delay 24 of 1024 transitions per second to make an average of 1000 Hz for the update rate.

* Known on the Windows platform as " DLL Hell ", an incompatible updated DLL will break executables that depended on the behavior of the previous DLL.

About 125 Qt developers will be transferred to Digia, with the immediate goal of bringing Qt support to Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.

However, the scripting engine will continue to be shipped with future releases of Microsoft Windows and IIS.

An in-kernel web server ( like TUX on GNU / Linux or Microsoft IIS on Windows ) will usually work faster, because, as part of the system, it can directly use all the hardware resources it needs, such as non-paged memory, CPU time-slices, network adapters, or buffers.

Because FCB compatibility has not been maintained, WordStar 3. x will not function properly on modern versions of Windows.

Photos can be edited with the Palm Photos PC software ( Windows only ), and when the photos are transferred to the handheld they will contain all changes made to the photo.

One typical difference between package management in proprietary operating systems, such as Mac OS X and Windows, and those in free and open source software, such as Linux, is that free and open source software systems permit third-party packages to also be installed and upgraded through the same mechanism, whereas the package management systems of Mac OS X and Windows will only upgrade software provided by Apple and Microsoft, respectively ( with the exception of some third party drivers in Windows ).

In versions before Windows Vista, if the user pushes the combination of Ctrl + Shift + F10 at any time during the game, the user will be presented with a tool used by the developers during testing.