Visual C++ and MFC Programming 2nd Edition

Visual C++ and MFC Fundamentals Chapter 12: Dialog-Based Windows

If you are creating a Win32 application, to create a window, you can call either the

CreateWindow() or the CreateWindowEx() function. Their syntaxes are:

HWND CreateWindow(

LPCTSTR lpClassName,

LPCTSTR lpWindowName,

DWORD dwStyle,

int x,

int y,

int nWidth,

int nHeight,

HWND hWndParent,

HMENU hMenu,

HINSTANCE hInstance,

LPVOID lpParam

);

HWND CreateWindowEx(

DWORD dwExStyle,

LPCTSTR lpClassName,

LPCTSTR lpWindowName,

DWORD dwStyle,

int x,

int y,

int nWidth,

int nHeight,

HWND hWndParent,

HMENU hMenu,

HINSTANCE hInstance,

LPVOID lpParam

);

You can simply call this function and specify its arguments after you have registered the

window class. Here is an example:

INT WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,

LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)

{

WNDCLASS WndCls;

...

RegisterClass(&WndCls);

CreateWindow(.. .);

}

If you are planning to use the window further in your application, you should retrieve the

result of the CreateWindow() or the CreateWindowEx() function, which is a handle to the

window that is being created. To do this, you can declare an HWND variable and

initialize it with the create function. This can be done as follows:

INT WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,

LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)

{

HWND hWnd;

WNDCLASS WndCls;

...

RegisterClass(&WndCls);

hWnd = CreateWindow(.. .);

}