Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces on Windows
Windows API
The Win32 subsystem shown next to the POSIX and OS/2 subsystem in the architecture of Windows NT (later Win64 is also available.)
Developer(s)
Microsoft
Initial release
November 20, 1985; 38 years ago (1985-11-20)
Operating system
Microsoft Windows, OS/2
Predecessor
DOS API
Type
API
License
Proprietary
Website
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running.
Each major version of the Windows API has another name that identifies a compatibility aspect of that version. For example, Win32 is the major version of Windows API that runs on 32-bit systems. The name, Windows API, collectively refers to all versions of this capability of Windows.
Microsoft provides developer support via a software development kit, Microsoft Windows SDK, which includes documentation and tools for building software based on the Windows API.
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component in the Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 as System Agent. Its core component is an eponymous Windows service. The Windows Task Scheduler infrastructure...
or Visual Basic. Windows Forms provides access to native Windows User Interface Common Controls by wrapping the existent WindowsAPI in managed code....
the computing industry -- Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system...
September 1995 as the Windows Game SDK. Its DirectDraw component was the Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1. DirectX allowed all...
performance and better image quality across Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Linux. No other graphics API offers the same powerful combination of OS...
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printers. It was superseded by DirectDraw API and later Direct2D API.[citation needed] Windows apps use WindowsAPI to interact with GDI, for such tasks as...