Windows was announced by Microsoft Corporation in November 1983 and released two years later in November 1985. Over the next two years, Windows 1.01 (the first released version) was followed by several updates to support the international market and to provide drivers for additional video displays and printers.
Windows 2.0 was released in November 1987. This version incorporated several changes to the user interface to make it consistent with the forthcoming OS/2 Presentation Manager (released in October 1988). The most significant of these changes involved the use of overlapping windows rather than the ”tiled“ windows found in the earlier versions of Windows. Windows 2.0 also included enhancements to the keyboard and mouse interface, particularly for menus and dialog boxes.
Windows/386 (released shortly after Windows 2.0) used the Virtual-86 mode of the 386 microprocessor to window and multitask many DOS programs that directly access hardware. For symmetry, Windows 2.1 was renamed Windows/286.
Windows 3—the subject of this book—was introduced in a spectacular product announcement on May 22, 1990. The earlier Windows/286 and Windows/386 versions have been merged into one product with this release. The big change in Windows 3 is the support of the protected mode operation of Intel's 80286 and 80386 microprocessors. This gives Windows and Windows applications access to up to 16 megabytes of memory. The Windows ”shell“ programs (the Program Manager, Task Manager, and File Manager) have been completely revamped.