Showing tag results for Code

Jul 29, 2004
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When should you use a sunken client area?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE extended window style allows you to create a window whose client area is "sunken". When should you use this style? The Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers says in the section on the Design of Visual Elements that the sunken border should be used "to define the work area within a window". Spec...

Code
Jul 27, 2004
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Disabling the program crash dialog

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you don't want your program to display the standard crash dialog, you can disable it by setting the SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX flag in the process error mode. The simple-minded way is just to do but this overwrites the previous error mode rather than augmenting it. In other words, you inadvertently turned off the other error modes! Unfortunat...

Code
Jul 23, 2004
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Why do some process stay in Task Manager after they've been killed?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

When a process ends (either of natural causes or due to something harsher like TerminateProcess), the user-mode part of the process is thrown away. But the kernel-mode part can't go away until all drivers are finished with the thread, too. For example, if a thread was in the middle of an I/O operation, the kernel signals to the driver res...

Code
Jul 23, 2004
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Why do some process stay in Task Manager after they’ve been killed?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

When a process ends (either of natural causes or due to something harsher like TerminateProcess), the user-mode part of the process is thrown away. But the kernel-mode part can't go away until all drivers are finished with the thread, too. For example, if a thread was in the middle of an I/O operation, the kernel signals to the driver res...

Code
Jul 20, 2004
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Querying information from an Explorer window

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

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 currently foc...

Code
Jul 19, 2004
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Wrapper templates to make writing callback functions slightly easier

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

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.) Every c...

Code
Jul 16, 2004
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How to display a string without those ugly boxes

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

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 function: That string contains the first three letters from three different alphab...

Code
Jul 15, 2004
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Don't forget to #define UNICODE if you want Unicode

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

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 without s...

Code
Jul 15, 2004
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Don’t forget to #define UNICODE if you want Unicode

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

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 without s...

Code