In computer programming a window class is a structure fundamental to the Microsoft Windows (Win16, Win32, and Win64) operating systems and its Application Programming Interface (API).
The structure provides a template, from which windows may be created, by specifying a window's icons, menu, background color and a few other features. It also holds a pointer to a procedure that controls how the window behaves in response to user interaction. It finally tells the operating system how much additional storage space is needed for the class itself and for each window created from it.
There have been two versions of window classes; the only non-technical addition brought by the second one is that of a small additional icon for the window. The first version was present in the Windows 3.x series; the second version appeared in Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.1.
Famous quotes containing the words window and/or class:
“The mind too closes as it were. As the window might close of a dark empty room.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)