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Polishing Windows by Dave Jewell Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-62437-0       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 491pp+disk       Price: £23-33

Categories:   MS Windows

Reviewed by David Hughes in C Vu 7-1 (Nov 1994)

The contents of this book (and disc) are all about the creation of Windows extensions (although these are now common in 1994 applications). You will find out how to create toolbars and statusbars, add 3D effects to dialogues, learn the method(s) of creating floating toolboxes (as in Visual Basic or AppStudio) and even one of those nifty spin button controls. The tutorial says what they are, what there are for and various ways to achieve them.

The body of the tutorials are in C (the appendix produces the same code in Pascal) and of course you will find all the code on disc, along with a copy of CTL3D.DLL (which gives application dialogues the 3D treatment, providing you load it into your application). If you want to see your Windows system in glorious 3D, try the supplied WIDE shareware package, this will give (almost) all of your dialogues the 3D effect.

Whether or not you use C++/MFC or Application builders, a basic understanding of the underlying principles of the SDK is essential if you want to do anything out of the ordinary. If you don't care how things work, or are happy to function at the level of custom controls and libraries, then this book is probably not for you. However, if you want to learn more, then you could learn a lot from Dave Jewell's offering (and at £23.33 it's a bargain).