Resources: New Shell Functions
New Shell Functions for Windows Vista
An extensive set of functions for Win32®, the unmanaged programming model for the Microsoft® Windows® operating system, have been added to the Shell API in Windows Vista®. In general, these functions can be placed into three categories, by purpose:
Updated versions of previously existing Shell functions
Functions that expose capabilities that existed in previous versions of Windows
Functions that expose capabilities in Windows Vista
Some of these functions can be used separately or in combination with the Shell COM interfaces. Others are designed to be used exclusively with the COM interfaces, for example, by returning a reference to a requested COM object. Several large groups of these functions are used to work with the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) for Windows Vista, for working with property stores, additional utility functions to work with item identifiers (ITEMIDLIST), PROPVARIANT and VARIANT structures, and general shell functionality.
For detailed information about the Windows Shell functions, see "Shell Functions" in the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK).