[StillBored]

Or just bite the bullet and use win32/COM, because its basically the API under all these newer APIs anyway, and in the cases its not there is a compatibility shim.

Of course this doesn't stop MS from simply removing functionality, like they have been doing for the past 10 years. Explorer has a fraction of the API surface it had in the past, as do large parts of the OS. Like for example the color APIs which used to describe every little part of the UI so it could be tweaked are now basically gone.