The Old New Thing

Drawing a monochrome bitmap with transparency

August 3, 2005 Aug 3, 2005 08/3/05

Raymond Chen

Last time, I left you with a brief puzzle. Here are two approaches. I am not a GDI expert, so there may be even better solutions out there. To emphasize the transparency, I'll change the window background color to the application workspace color. BOOL WinRegisterClass(WNDCLASS *pwc) { pwc->hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_APPWORKSPACE...

Rendering menu glyphs is slightly trickier

August 2, 2005 Aug 2, 2005 08/2/05

Raymond Chen

Last time, we saw how to draw themed and unthemed radio buttons, and I mentioned that menu glyphs are trickier. They're trickier because they are provided as raw monochrome bitmaps instead of fully-formed color-coordinated bitmaps. First, let's do it wrong in order to see what we get. Then we'll try to fix it. Start with a clean new scratch...

Microsoft Company Picnic 2005

August 1, 2005 Aug 1, 2005 08/1/05

Raymond Chen

This weekend, it was Microsoft's turn to rent Mountain Meadows Farm for the company picnic. As I noted last year, the picnic is put on by a company that just puts on company picnics all summer. In addition to Microsoft, they also do Alaska Air, Honeywell, T-Mobile, and Amazon. I decided to bicycle to the picnic this year. The route was ...

Rendering standard Windows elements

August 1, 2005 Aug 1, 2005 08/1/05

Raymond Chen

The DrawFrameControl function allows you to render standard Windows elements in your custom controls. Let's start by simply rendering a selected radio button. Start with our new scratch program and make this very simple change: class RootWindow : public Window { ... protected: void PaintContent(PAINTSTRUCT *pps); ... }; void ...

Does Windows have a limit of 2000 threads per process?

July 29, 2005 Jul 29, 2005 07/29/05

Raymond Chen

Often I see people asking why they can't create more than around 2000 threads in a process. The reason is not that there is any particular limit inherent in Windows. Rather, the programmer failed to take into account the amount of address space each thread uses. A thread consists of some memory in kernel mode (kernel stacks and object ...

What is this “web site” thing you are talking about?

July 28, 2005 Jul 28, 2005 07/28/05

Raymond Chen

One reaction I've seen when people learn about all the compatibility work done in the Windows 95 kernel is to say, Why not add code to the installer wizard [alas, page is now 404] which checks to see if you're installing SimCity and, if so, informs you of a known design flaw, then asks you to visit Electronic Arts' webpage for a patch...

When the normal window destruction messages are thrown for a loop

July 27, 2005 Jul 27, 2005 07/27/05

Raymond Chen

Last time, I alluded to weirdness that can result in the normal cycle of destruction messages being thrown out of kilter. Commenter Adrian noted that the WM_GETMINMAXINFO message arrives before WM_NCCREATE for top-level windows. This is indeed unfortunate but (mistake or not) it's been that way for over a decade and changing it now would ...

What is the difference between WM_DESTROY and WM_NCDESTROY?

July 26, 2005 Jul 26, 2005 07/26/05

Raymond Chen

There are two window messages closely-associated with window destruction, the WM_DESTROY message and the WM_NCDESTROY message. What's the difference? The difference is that the WM_DESTROY message is sent at the start of the window destruction sequence, whereas the WM_NCDESTROY message is sent at the end. This is an important distinction ...

Dinner at the Herbfarm in Woodinville

July 25, 2005 Jul 25, 2005 07/25/05

Raymond Chen

As part of the going-away festivities for my friend, a group of us went to The Herbfarm, the local restaurant referenced in Clue I of Puzzle #3. The restaurant is nestled in the Sammamish Valley, right next to the Willows Lodge resort and its restaurant, The Barking Frog. Less than a kilometer down the road is the Chateau Ste. ...

On paying for your meal upon leaving a restaurant

July 25, 2005 Jul 25, 2005 07/25/05

Raymond Chen

Robert Scoble's embarrassment over forgetting to pay a restaurant bill reminds me of an even more embarrassing incident experienced by a component team from the Windows 95 team. To celebrate something or other, their team went to lunch at The Salish Lodge, a fine dining establishment. At the end of the meal, everybody thought somebody...