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I was a Windows developer back in the day. After a certain Windows release, Microsoft had a Windows App Certification checklist of features you had to use if y

I was a Windows developer back in the day. After a certain Windows release, Microsoft had a Windows App Certification checklist of features you had to use if you wanted various levels of support, or sales to brick and mortar stores (they required that to reduce support calls and returns.) At first I found the checklists irritating, as they required essentially a major application release for each Windows version - your application bit-rotted essentially. But in the end, it was worth it as the application was more polished, with standardized paths, help, etc.

elwes5 6y ago
The amount of crazy things people did in win3.x was pretty amazing. MS kind of did it to themselves. Want to know what an HWIN looks like? Right there in the header. No functions to access those items. Now you can not change that struct without breaking hundreds of programs. I remember the other devs grumbling that the win9x headers did not have the system structs in there. What was just an update into an a pointer deref became 'which method do I need to change this feature now...' game. That MS pulled that compat job off and did not absolutely obliterate everything I have to admire.