Most Helpful Customer Reviews
80 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book to get you on your way!, June 25, 1999
This review is from: Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series) (Hardcover)
I would reference this book as the "bible" of win32 programming. This book covers many features of the Windows 95/98/NT features including printing, MDI, Mouse, Keyboard, and all the goodies. This book sits upon my desk as the #1 reference when writing win32 code (without MFC). If your new to programming and are thinking about MFC I would consider starting with this non-object oriented approach so you understand what MFC is doing behind all the objects. Easy reading (compared to other programming books) and a great deal of learning can be done. To 4th edition "Programming Windows 95" owners: 1. If you want to use ToolBar's you better hold on to the last revision because it's missing in this one. I was very unhappy about that. 2. It's huge! If you thought carrying that last book was an issue, add a hard cover and a ton more pages and you've better start working out before carrying this around. 3. More usage of UNICODE and "NT" style information that is repeated in each code segment so be prepared. It's a revision, and it's good. It's the best out there right now, but will not solve every problem you'll have. Note: If you like object oriented, and uses of all the enhanced features of C++ you're not going to find it here.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent introductory book on the Win32 API, October 18, 2000
This review is from: Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series) (Hardcover)
This book is great for anyone who wants to learn Windows programming using its native API. It is very readable and requires only a basic knowledge of C, so it is an excellent tutorial for beginners, but there is enough meat in it that it is quite useful for advanced programmers as well. The author explains everything clearly, thoroughly, and accurately. The numerous example programs he uses to illustrate his concepts are well-written and free of bugs. The book is peppered with occasional historical asides. If you can't stand historical asides, you may be frustrated, but it's understandable that a guy who's been programming Windows for 15 years will have a few stories to tell. The book has excellent, awesome, unbeatable, all-that-almost-anybody-would-ever-need coverage of: window procedures and messages, keyboard and mouse input, fonts and character sets/Unicode, the GDI (including mapping modes and metafiles), dialog boxes and child/MDI windows, palettes and bitmaps of all kinds, menus and resources, timers, and printing. The book has very good coverage, without going into the really advanced details, of: DLLs, multithreading, MIDI and wave audio, Winsock, and internet functions. Notable omissions are: registry functions, file I/O, COM/OLE/ActiveX controls, Setup applications, the Shell (links, namespace extensions, screen savers, WinHelp), and the common controls (toolbars, sliders, tree views, property sheets/wizards, list views and header controls). Despite its omissions, this book is well worth its money for anyone who wants to learn (or learn more) about the Windows API.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best way to learn the Win32 API from scratch, March 24, 2002
This review is from: Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series) (Hardcover)
I own 'Programming Windows 95' which is a previous version of this book...this newer version adds additional information, while retaining the best of the older versions. I'm a self-taught software engineer and have relied on books for most of my training. When I needed to learn the Win32 API to write Windows application programs, I initially turned to the Microsoft website and their tutorials, but found this approach frustrating because there was no overall picture presented...a lot of knowledge was assumed. Petzold's book was the answer to my frustrations...it assumed no Windows specific knowledge, although general C/C++ background is assumed. The book starts with simple examples that are thoroughly explained. Once enough topics are covered, an excellent overview of Windows as an event-driven operating system is presented, and the remainder of the book is devoted to covering real-world, useful examples in enough detail that they provide starting points for the reader's own development projects. In the companies for which I've worked, most of the programmers refer to Petzold's book as the 'bible' for Windows programming...for good reason. This is the best book for learning Windows programming if you are starting with no previous knowledge of the Windows operating system.
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