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copied!<p>Win32 + C is a very low-level approach, which has its advantages and disadvantages. That said, there are ways to make things easier.</p> <p>First, regarding bit-shifts, there are <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd469352.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">several macros to work with WPARAMs and LPARAMs</a>. You probably shouldn't be writing bit-shifts, in fact, because the <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/25/55850.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">size of WPARAM and LPARAM has changed over the years</a>, and you might be creating a future bug.</p> <p>Secondly, regarding the giant switch statement in your WindowProc function, while that will be there, there's a way to make it a bit more manageable. <code>#include <windowsx.h></code> to get a whole bunch of useful macros, most notably HANDLE_MSG. Instead of needing to write</p> <pre><code>LRESULT CALLBACK MyWindowProc(HWND hwnd, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) { switch(Message) { case WM_COMMAND: ... } } </code></pre> <p>You can instead write:</p> <pre><code>void MyOnCommand(HWND hwnd, int controlID, HWND hwndCtl, UINT codeNotify); LRESULT CALLBACK MyWindowProc(HWND hwnd, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) { switch(Message) { HANDLE_MSG(hwnd, WM_COMMAND, MyOnCommand); } } </code></pre> <p>and the macro automatically casts and separates all the different parameters for that message type into the appropriately named & typed variables. Browse <code>windowsx.h</code> to see the messages that are handled, and the function prototypes it requires. Not all the different messages are handled, but quite a few are.</p> <p>As for having multiple windows at once, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from calling CreateWindow or its relatives multiple times. While you only have one <code>HINSTANCE</code> (given to you in your <code>WinMain</code>), you can have as many <code>HWND</code>s as you want.</p> <p>You may find <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/07/23/54576.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Raymond Chen's scratch program</a> useful, as it should give you a decent skeleton to start from. You might also consider making your application use a <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632588.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">dialog box</a> instead of just a window; you get a bunch of stuff for free, and you can use a resource editor to design the window and all its controls. <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hs24szh9.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Visual C++ Standard and above</a> include a resource editor, and there are also several free ones: <a href="http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d10resourceeditor.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">XN Resource Editor</a> seems to be a popular open-source editor, and I'm sure you can find more on Google. All of these produce a resource script, and you should have a resource compiler in your toolchain: <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa381042.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">rc.exe</a> for Visual Studio (including the Express Editions, or available as part of the SDK), or <a href="http://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/binutils/windres.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">windres</a> as part of the GNU BinUtils in cygwin or mingw.</p>

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