As of today, IE 10 for Windows 7 has been officially released . IE10 for Windows 7 includes portions of the DirectX 11.1 runtime for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 via KB 2670838 . Full technical details of what's included in KB 2670838 are covered on MSDN . The...

Windows 8 includes a number of changes to the parental control ratings systems supported by Windows Family Safety (aka Windows Parental Controls) for Win32 desktop games. These changes are now available on Windows 7 via KB2773072 . It is recommended that all game publishers populate their GDFs using...

There are a number of new features and some bugs fixed in the Windows Imaging Component for Windows 8 . With the installation of KB 2670838 this new version of WIC is also available on Windows 7 Service Pack 1. The Windows 8.0 SDK contains the latest version of the headers needed to build with the...

Windows 8 includes an updated “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” that supports Direct3D 11.1 , updates Direct2D and DirectWrite , DXGI 1.2 , and a revision of the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) . Portions of the “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” are being made available on Windows 7 Service Pack...

The Windows SDK for Windows 8 (aka Windows 8.0 SDK) RTM version is now available on MSDN . See Where is the DirectX SDK? for details on DirectX content in the Windows 8.0 SDK. This includes the D3DCompiler_46.DLL release of the HLSL compiler , DirectXMath version 3.03, DirectX 11.1 headers/libs, and...

Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 is now available on Windows Update, MSDN Subscriber Downloads, and TechNet. The announcement from the Windows team can be read on the Windows Team Blog , and one from the server team can be found here . For Windows 7, Service Pack 1 is primarily a...

Since the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2, support for the Windows Media codec (WMV) has been built into the OS, so developers have come to rely on it being there particularly for DirectShow playback of cutscenes or video textures. On Windows Vista, we introduced the Windows Media Foundation APIs...