Programming Industrial Strength Windows: Shrink-Wrap Your App!

1016 Pages·2000·4.36 MB·English

by  Petter Hesselberg

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Page i
Programming Industrial Strength Windows
Shrink-Wrap Your App!
Petter Hesselberg
Page ii
Disclaimer:
This netLibrary eBook does not include the ancillary media that was
packaged with the original printed version of the book.
R&D Books
CMP Media, Inc.
1601 W. 23rd Street, Suite 200
Lawrence, KS 66046
USA
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are
often claimed as trademarks. In all instances where R&D is aware of a
trademark claim, the product name appears in initial capital letters, in
all capital letters, or in accordance with the vendor's capitalization
preference. Readers should contact the appropriate companies for
more complete information on trademarks and trademark
registrations. All trademarks and registered trademarks in this book
are the property of their respective holders.
Copyright © 2000 by Petter Hesselberg, except where noted
otherwise. Published by R&D Books, CMP Media, Inc. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this
publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior
written permission of the publisher; with the exception that the
program listings may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer
system, but they may not be reproduced for publication.
The programs in this book are presented for instructional value. The
programs have been carefully tested, but are not guaranteed for any
particular purpose. The publisher does not offer any warranties and
does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any
information herein and is not responsible for any errors or omissions.
The publisher assumes no liability for damages resulting from the use
of the information in this book or for any infringement of the
intellectual property rights of third parties that would result from the
use of this information.
Cover art created by Robert Ward.
Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by:
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1-800-788-3123
ISBN: 0-87930-605-X
Page iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Listings ix
Introduction xiii
Who Should Read This Book? xv
The Source Code xv
Acknowledgments xvi
Legal Matters xvii
Section I 1
Background
Chapter 1 3
The Road Ahead
Destination: The Application 3
Roadbed: The Target Platform 4
Vehicle: The Programming Language 5
Chapter 2 9
Designing for Users
Polite Applications 10
Robustness 11
Focused Design 12
The Windows Logo Program 12

Page iv
Usability Testing 12
The Unified File Model 14
Chapter 3 17
Designing for Programmers
Programming Guiding Principles 17
Getting Your Priorities Straight 19
Global Variables Considered Harmful 21
Assert Your Sanity 21
Constantly on Guard 22
Use Destruction Constructively 23
Programming Defensively 31
Is Windows Object-Oriented? 31
Chapter 4 35
The Mechanics of Subclassing
Subclassing Defined 35
Instance Subclassing 36
Global Subclassing 39
Class Cloning 41
General Mechanism for Global Subclassing 43
General Mechanism for Instance Subclassing 46
The Window Class: Wrapping the HWND 54
Section II 63
Foreground
Chapter 5 65
The Bare Bones
The Major Organs 66
The Heart 70
The Editor Class 71
The Document Class 76
The AbstractEditWnd Class 82
Of Strings and PATHNAMEs 86
Chapter 6 93
Exceptions
Return Codes 94
Exceptions 95
Two-Stage Construction 95
Global Object Constructor Exceptions 96
The TextEdit Exception Classes 96
Converting Allocation Failures to Exceptions 106
Recovering from Errors 106
Structured Exception Handling and C++ Exceptions 107
Page v
Chapter 7 111
Off the Launch Pad
Click, Drag, and Drop 111
Shell Integration 117
GUI Summary 118
The Console Connection 118
File Not Found 124
Read-Only 125
Other Anomalies 125
Command-Line Piping 127
Drag and Drop Revisited 128
Additional Switches 129
Accessing the Command Line 130
Chapter 8 147
Child Windows
Window Creation 148
The Toolbar 148
The Status Bar 166
Chapter 9 179
The Main Window
Handling WM_COMMAND Messages 179
The Clipboard User Interface 180
Persistence in the Main Window 182
Drag and Drop 182
Menu Management 183
Communication between TextEdit Instances 188
Changing User Settings 189
Notifications 189
The Editor Connection 189
Chapter 10 223
Customization and Persistence
Customizing Windows 223
Retrieving the Font 225
Customizing TextEdit 231
Long-Term Memory 232
The Registry Interface 234
MRU 248
RunOnce 255
Food for Persistent Thought 260
Chapter 11 263
Wait a Moment
Changing the Cursor Image 265