Main article: History of the graphical user interface
Microsoft Windows 1.0 displayed windows using a tiling window manager. In Windows 2.0, it was replaced with a stacking window manager, which allowed windows to overlap. Microsoft kept the stacking window manager up through Windows XP, which presented severe limitations to its ability to display 3D-accelerated content inside normal windows. Although it was technically possible to produce some visual effects using third-party software.4 From Windows Vista onward, a new compositing window manager is the default on compatible systems.5
Main article: X window manager
Many windows managers under the X Window System provide stacking window functionality:
Some window managers may be able to treat the foreground window in an entirely different way, by rendering it indirectly, and sending its output to the video card to be added to the outgoing raster. While this technique may be possible to accomplish within some stacking window managers, it is technically compositing, with the foreground window and the screen raster being treated the same way two windows would be in a compositing window manager.
Interacting with objects outside the original area of the foreground window might also be impossible, since the window manager would not be able to determine what the user is seeing, and would pass such mouse clicks to whatever programs occupied those areas of the screen during the last stacking event.
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