Microsoft Windows was announced by Bill Gates on November 10, 1983. Microsoft introduced Windows as a graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which had been introduced two years earlier. The product line evolved in the 1990s from an operating environment into a fully complete, modern operating system over two lines of development, each with their own separate codebase.
Microsoft Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for servers, and Windows IoT for embedded systems. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone.
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and designed for businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officially released to retail on February 17, 2000 and September 26, 2000 for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. It was Microsoft's business operating system until the introduction of Windows XP Professional in 2001.
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. Microsoft introduced ActiveX in 1996. In principle, ActiveX is not dependent on Microsoft Windows operating systems, but in practice, most ActiveX controls only run on Windows. Most also require the client to be running on an x86-based computer because ActiveX controls contain compiled code.
The Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) is a series of technical conferences and workshops, where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Windows devices.
The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in the macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS families as well as other Apple software; new hardware products are sometimes announced as well. WWDC is also an event hosted for third-party software developers that work on apps for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple devices. Attendees can participate in hands-on labs with Apple engineers and attend in-depth sessions covering a wide variety of topics.
Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) is a message queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95. Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 also includes this component. In addition to its mainstream server platform support, MSMQ has been incorporated into Microsoft Embedded platforms since 1999 and the release of Windows CE 3.0.
Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993.
Windows NT 3.51 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the third version of Windows NT and was released on May 30, 1995, eight months following the release of Windows NT 3.5. The most significant enhancement offered in this release was that it provides client/server support for inter-operating with Windows 95, which was released almost three months after NT 3.51. Windows NT 4.0 became its successor a year later. Mainstream support for Windows NT 3.51 Workstation ended on December 31, 2000, and extended support ended on December 31, 2001, while Windows NT 3.51 Server mainstream support ended on September 30, 2000, followed by extended support on September 30, 2002. Both editions were succeeded by Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Windows NT 4.0 Server, respectively.
Cairo was the codename for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996. Its charter was to build technologies for a next-generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates's vision of "information at your fingertips." Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since appeared in other products.
Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a web browser for Windows. It has been retired on all Windows versions except Windows Embedded Compact 2013. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser since 2001. It was the default browser in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, as well as Windows Embedded POSReady 2009, and can replace Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but unlike version 6, this version does not support Windows 2000, Windows ME, or earlier versions of Windows. It also does not support Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later Windows Versions.
Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server", is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on February 27, 2008. Derived from Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 is the successor of Windows Server 2003 and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008 R2.
Windows Meeting Space was a peer-to-peer collaboration program developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista as a replacement for Windows NetMeeting and it enables application sharing, collaborative editing, desktop sharing, file sharing, projecting, and simple text-based or ink-based instant messaging across up to 10 users connected to the same network or across the Internet. Meeting Space has the ability to automatically set up an ad hoc wireless network if a connection to a network or the Internet are not available and also enables participants to invite other people to meeting sessions. It is the first application for the new peer-to-peer framework in Windows Vista and hence requires IPv6.
The development of Windows Vista began in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and continuing until November 2006.
Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7", is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009, shortly after the completion of Windows 7. It is the successor to Windows Server 2008, which is derived from the Windows Vista codebase, released the previous year, and was succeeded by the Windows 8-based Windows Server 2012.
Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing platform run by Microsoft, which offers access, management, and development of applications and services through global data centers. It provides a range of capabilities, including software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Microsoft Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.
AppFabric is a set of middleware technologies for Windows Server, released by Microsoft. It consists of two main feature areas: AppFabric Hosting and AppFabric Caching. Microsoft support for these ended in November 2017. A newer version of the product from Microsoft is Service Fabric.
Blackbird was the codename for an online content authoring platform developed by Microsoft in the mid-90s. Intended to be the online publishing tool for the first version of MSN, "Blackbird" was born of a Microsoft acquisition of Daily Planet Software, and the tool was first conceived prior to the advent of the Internet and Web as we know it today. At the time, AOL and CompuServe were the primary online venues, and the introduction of the Web to mass consumers was about to begin, even as low-bandwidth, dialup connections dominated. "Blackbird" was based on the concept of an object-based backend file system in Microsoft Data Centers, a low-bandwidth-streaming rendering client with page-based layout and embedded interactive client-side ActiveX objects. Fundamentally, it was based on the SGML standard for client-side layout. It became a Microsoft-promoted alternative to HTML for a brief time, just as the commercial Internet and Web Browser were born. But with scripting capability for HTML yet to be demonstrated, it was to be a means to serve dynamic, media-rich applications and documents that contained processing logic, similar to what a user would experience in a desktop environment. Pages in a "Blackbird application" would be able to contain video, audio, graphs, and other OLE based document formats without the need of plug-ins.
Microsoft Build is an annual conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a successor for Microsoft's previous developer events, the Professional Developers Conference and MIX. The attendee price was (US)$2,195 in 2016, up from $2,095 in 2015. It sold out quickly, within one minute of the registration site opening in 2016.
