There are a number of systems that advocate the use of lazy functional languages for the programming of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as Haggis, Gadgets, and Fudgets. These systems have addressed similar issues, such as how to handle I/O in a purely functional language, and how to provide a structured interface to the event driven model of windowing systems. In this report we present a framework that encapsulates such common elements and is intended to aid in the formal study of the relationships between these systems. The framework is called Embracing Windows, partly because it embraces the window paradigm, and partly because it uses the Hugs functional programming system. Two high-level GUI development systems have been built on the framework, and are based upon Haggis and Fudgets, respectively. The essence of these systems is distilled and a brief comparison made. The complete Haskell source code for the Embracing Windows framework is presented as an appendix. The framework ...