Skip to main content

Introduction to Win32

Win32 is a library made of data types, variables, constants, functions, and classes (mostly structures) that can be used to create applications for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. A typical application is made of at least two objects: a control and a host object on which the control is positioned.
To create a Win32 application using Microsoft Visual C++:
  • On the Start Page, you can click New Project
  • On the main menu, you can click File -> New Project...
  • On the Standard toolbar, you can click the New Project button
  • You can press Ctrl + N
Any of these actions would display the New Project dialog box. From there, select Win32 Project item.
Just like a C++ program always has a main() function, a Win32 program uses a central function called WinMain. The syntax of that function is: 
INT WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                    LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow );
To support international characters, Microsoft Windows provides another version of this function named _tWinMain. This version uses the same syntax (same arguments) as the first.
Unlike the C++'s main() function, the arguments of the WinMain() function are not optional. Your program will need them to communicate with the operating system. Here is an example of starting a program with the WinMain() function:
#include <windows.h>

INT WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                   LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow )
{ 
    return 0;
}
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to create a new static library project in Visual C++

From the File menu, select New and then Project…. From the Project types pane, under Visual C++, select Win32. From the Templates pane, select Win32 Console Application. Choose a name for the project, such as MathFuncsLib, and enter it in the Name field. Choose a name for the solution, such as StaticLibrary, and enter it in the Solution Name field. Press OK to start the Win32 application wizard. From the Overview page of the Win32 Application Wizard dialog, press Next. From the Application Settings page of the Win32 Application Wizard, under Application type, select Static library. From the Application Settings page of the Win32 Application Wizard, under Additional options, deselect Pre-compiled header. Press Finish to create the project.
Post a Comment
Read more

Introduction to Microsoft Visual C++/MFC

Microsoft Visual C++ is a programming environment used to create applications for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. To use these lessons, you must have installed either Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Although Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional provides many programming environments for the price of one, in our lessons, we will use it but we will cover only the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library side. After installing it, to use the programming environment, you must first open it. To do that, you would click Start -> (All) Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. In our lessons, unless used in code, the -> arrow means an action that should follow another. Based on this: Edit -> Copy means click Edit, then click Copy View -> Toolbars -> Custom means click View position the mouse on Toolbars, and then click Custom To start Microsoft Visual C++ or Visual Studio, on the Taskbar, click Start (All) Prog...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Window's Instance

When you start an application such as Notepad, you are said to have created an instance of the application. In the same way, when you declare a variable of a class, an instance of the class is created and made available to the project. The WinMain() function also allows you to create an instance of an application, referred to as the hInstance argument of the WinMain() function. The instance is created as an HINSTANCE . The CWinApp class provides a corresponding instance variable called m_hInstance . This variable can let you get a handle to the instance of your application. Alternatively, to get a handle to the instance of your application, you can call the AfxGetInstanceHandle() global function. Its syntax is: HINSTANCE AfxGetInstanceHandle(); Even more, to get a handle to your application, you can call the Win32 API's GetWindowLong() function. Suppose you have opened Notepad to view the source code of an HTML document. This is said that you have an instance of Notepad. Imag...
Post a Comment
Read more