Querying information from an Explorer window

Raymond Chen July 20, 2004 Jul 20, 2004 07/20/04

Sometimes software development is inventing new stuff. But often, it's just putting together the stuff you already have. Today's puzzle is one of the latter type of problem. Given a window handle, you can you determine (1) whether it is an Explorer window, and if so (2) what folder it is viewing, and (3) what item is ...

Wrapper templates to make writing callback functions slightly easier

Raymond Chen July 19, 2004 Jul 19, 2004 07/19/04

I previously discussed why callback functions must be static if they are member functions. Writing the correct prototype for the callback function is usually somewhat clumsy. It's not hard. Just clumsy. (If you read my previous article, you'd recognizing sticking a __stdcall in the declaration for RealThreadProc as a micro-optimization.) ...

How to display a string without those ugly boxes

Raymond Chen July 16, 2004 Jul 16, 2004 07/16/04

You've all seen those ugly boxes. When you try to display a string and the font you have doesn't support all of the characters in it, you get an ugly box for the characters that aren't available in the font. Start with our scratch program and add this to the PaintContent function: That string contains the first three letters from three...

Don’t forget to #define UNICODE if you want Unicode

Raymond Chen July 15, 2004 Jul 15, 2004 07/15/04

I answered this comment directly, but it deserves reiteration with wider visibility. If you don't #define UNICODE, you get ANSI by default. If you want to see characters beyond the boring 7-bit ASCII, make sure you are using a font that can display those characters. I am assuming a level of competence where issues like this go ...

Don't forget to #define UNICODE if you want Unicode

Raymond Chen July 15, 2004 Jul 15, 2004 07/15/04

I answered this comment directly, but it deserves reiteration with wider visibility. If you don't #define UNICODE, you get ANSI by default. If you want to see characters beyond the boring 7-bit ASCII, make sure you are using a font that can display those characters. I am assuming a level of competence where issues like this go ...

How do you detect “Large Fonts”?

Raymond Chen July 14, 2004 Jul 14, 2004 07/14/04

When people ask, "How do I detect Large Fonts", they aren't really asking how to detect Large Fonts specifically. Rather, Large Fonts is just the most common manifestation of "unusual DPI". Windows uses a nominal DPI of 96 pixels per inch. In other words, if Windows wants to draw a line that is one inch long, it draws 96 pixels. Of course...