Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic, (Book/CD-Rom)

Visual Basic provides an effective rapid application development environment in large measure because it shields the programmer from many of the intricacies of the Windows operating system. Often, though, the result is a tradeoff: ease and speed of development comes at the cost of poorer performance, as well as a loss of flexibility and control. Fortunately, Visual Basic is extensible: when the details that Visual Basic hides get in the way of your application development, you can always circumvent Visual Basic by directly calling the Win32 Application Programming Interface (API).

Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic is written for intermediate and advanced Visual Basic programmers who are interested in incorporating Windows system services into their applications. To help programmers accomplish this, the book focuses on two major topics:

• The basic operation of the Windows NT and Windows 9x operating systems. Microsoft's documentation rarely takes into account what the readers need to know in order to call functions in the Win32 API.
• The major functions of the Win32 API. In discussing the Win32 API, the book first shows how to call the Win32 API from Visual Basic code, and then shows how to use the major functions of the Win32 API effectively.

In showing how to use the Win32 API in your applications, the book focuses on a wide range of practical programming tasks ranging from the simple to the complex, such as:

• Retrieving basic system information, such as the operating system version
• Adding tab stops to a list box
• Writing data to and retrieving data from the registry or private initialization files
• Synchronizing two VB applications so they can work cooperatively
• Enumerating the fonts available on a system
• Sub-classing controls to produce a specialized behavior
• Invading the address space of another application to read and write its data and execute its code
• Installing a hook to monitor or alter the behavior of the mouse or keyboard

Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic provides the background and information needed for Visual Basic programmers to eliminate the trial and error that is often associated with calling the Win32 API.

This book is intended for the intermediate- or higher-level Visual Basic programmer. The book has two goals:
Describe the basic operation of the Windows NT and Windows 9x operating systems.

As you may know, the Win32 Application Programming Interface, or Win32 API for short, is the programming interface that is used to programmatically control the Windows operating system. More specifically, the Win32 API consists of a collection of functions and subroutines, supplied in a handful of dynamic link libraries (DLLs), that provide programmatic access to the features of the operating system.

The first goal mentioned earlier is a practical one since, as we will see, the Win32 API can be of immense use in extending the power of Visual Basic. The second goal is less practical, but is equally important, since Microsoft's documentation seldom takes into account what the reader knows or does not know. Hence, a grounding in the basics of the Windows operating systems will help VB programmers understand Microsoft's documentation.

Of course, the two goals are not unrelated. Indeed, the purpose of the Win32 API is to implement the services (or features, if you will) of the Windows operating system. Hence, in order to understand the function of the Win32 API, it is important to have some understanding of how Windows itself works.