How has the Windows API changed over the past 10 years?

Question

I am wondering how the Windows interface has changed over the past 10 years with Windows 98 and Windows 2000? What interesting API calls have been added that you know? Also, are people still writing something in the API?

Now I am studying everything that I can about Windows programming, and it is very interesting to me. Because books do not explain everything, they simply explain a small subset of the entire API. And I want to know about the most modern things in the Windows API.

So, my general question is: where can I find a detailed report on the differences in WinAPI for versions 98, 200, Xp, Vista and 7?

Answer 1

The Win32 API has undergone significant changes over the past ten years. This link gives you API changes between XP and Vista and Vista and Windows 7. This is a long list.

All Windows applications use the API directly (C / C ++ call to existing Win32 APIs and COM objects) or indirectly through an infrastructure such as MFC or .NET.

Answer 2

The real answer is that the basic logic does not change. You can take the non-trivial source code of Windows 1.0 and compile it for Windows 7 with minimal modifications. You still have all the basic building blocks:

• creating a window class;
• window creation;
• message loop;
• window procedure;
• resources for dialogs and menus;
• window styles;
• many more

It is true that many new APIs have been added, but the most common ones still exist. You do the same thing the same way.

Answer 3

One good way to learn about some of the new APIs and why and how they were written is to read blogs from various Microsoft developers who work / work on Windows or related systems. Some examples:

Mark Russinovich - http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/
Raymond Chen - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/
Larry Osterman - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/

There, people still write clean Win32 applications, but maybe not so much, since most applications do not need to be written at this level and you can usually write faster at a higher level. Many .Net applications, etc. They will still refer directly to the various methods of the Windows API, however, when the .Net framework contains the functions they need.