Microsoft Windows 3.1

The Windows Interface: An Application Design Guide provided guidelines for applications designed for Microsoft Windows 3.1. It was included in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) and published by Microsoft Press®.

Many of the recommendations in The Windows Interface: An Application Design Guide were carried forward and extended into this guide to reflect the new conventions in Microsoft OLE and Microsoft Windows 95. These extended, revised, or new conventions include:

• Recommendations for applying command and direct manipulation transfer methods between applications and the system's shell components.
• Recommendations for mouse button 2, specifically, displaying pop-up menus upon a button 2 click and supporting nondefault drag and drop.
• The replacement of the Control (System) menu with the pop-up menu for the window.
• New conventions for minimizing and re-opening windows.
• Recommendations for using the title bar Close button, the What's This? button, and title bar icons and their accompanying pop-up menus.
• New guidelines for ordering the title bars of document or data file windows.
• New common dialog box interfaces and new controls — list views, tree views, column headings, progress indicators, toolbars, tooltips, property sheets, tabs, status bars, rich-text boxes, sliders, spin boxes, proportional scroll bars, and pen controls.
• Recommendations for displaying and editing properties; including guidelines for using the Properties command, property sheets, and property inspectors.
• New conventions for context-sensitive (What's This?) Help and task Help and recommendations for wizard design.
• New registry entries and shell integration conventions — support for storing application state and path information, file type association, file creation, adding commands for files, file installation, providing access to your application, extending the shell, file viewing using the Quick View command, adding sound events, icon support, and AutoPlay.
• Support for long filenames and access to network resources using universal naming conventions (UNC) pathnames.
• New OLE recommendations — container supplied pop-up menus, Properties command, and property sheets.
• Revised design conventions for window components and icons.
• Recommended conventions for supporting Microsoft telephony application programming interfaces (TAPI), messaging application programming interfaces (MAPI), Plug and Play, pen application programming interfaces, and accessibility utilities.