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When we ship software at Desaware, we test on all the major operating system versions with both a clean install and the latest service pack. Then we use our own VersionStamper product to give our applications or components self-diagnosis capabilities so that we can track down what's wrong on a given customer's system (and, in some cases, automatically download components from our FTP site). |
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But a book can't be self-updating, and a printed page can't scan your system. |
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So this book assumes that you are running Windows NT 4.0. This is not a bad choice if you think about itmost serious professional developers work on NT instead of Windows 95/98 because NT is a robust operating system with excellent process isolation, a necessity when working at the API leveland Windows 95 and 98 are . . . well, they are operating systems. NT 2000 is likely to exhibit similar behavior to NT 4.0 for the types of applications you'll see in this book, assuming it ever ships. |
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Results are described for Windows 95/98 when there are differences, because professional developers do need to consider operating system differences when developing applications. As you go through the puzzles, it should become apparent that this type of development should always be done on Windows NT, if only because it detects more errors and provides better error reporting than Windows 95/98. |
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This book is about calling API and DLL functions from Visual Basic. |
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If you're a beginner, you may be wondering, "What's an API function?" or "What's a DLL function?" You may be concerned that you don't know anything about how Windows works. You may not know what the terms "window handle'' and "device context" refer to. |
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Well, I'm not going to tell you. |
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You see, this book is not about the Win32 API itself. I already wrote that book. It's called Dan Appleman's Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API. It's one of the best-selling books for Visual Basic programmers and is available at any bookstore with a good computer book department (or you can order it from Desaware, Inc., at http://www.desaware.com/ and other mail-order booksellers). The first four chapters of that book contain information that even beginning VB programmers will be able to follow to learn the fundamentals of API programming from Visual Basic. The rest of the book teaches the core Win32 APIhow Windows works and how the API functions work. It's 1,500 pages long (plus a few more chapters on CD-ROM). If you think I can cover the information in that book in this much shorter book, you are sorely mistaken. Not only that, why should I bother? |
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