Every upgrade to Windows includes greater capabilities than previous versions (and rightly so). Windows 95 and Windows NT contain a whole set of new visual components called common controls. These controls include status bars, toolbars, trackbars, list and tree views, property sheets, wizards, common dialog boxes, rich edit text, and more.
Common controls offer two advantages. First, they simplify your application development job. Rather than writing custom items like status bars, tree views, and rich edit controls, you can make immediate use of the fully functioning controls that Windows provides. Second, common controls will give your applications the look and feel that people are familiar with in other Windows programs. Windows itself uses these common controls to make up its displays.