My collection of unresolved Windows API questions...

[TuxedoTemplar]

Well I'm relatively new at API programming, so bear with me here. I'm doing a few C++ windows API programs that I had been planning to do for a while now, but I've hit been running into more problems than I think I can get resolved in a reasonable time frame, so I've instead been collecting them so I can get some help from someone who would hopefully know these (they're fairly easy I would imagine.) I read theForger's win API tutorial for everything that I know already about win API programming, just so you can see where I'm coming from. Anyway here they are:

• How do I open an URL in a web browser from within my program?
• Having gotton the Open and Save dialogs to work (gets the file's name), how do I perform file IO? (like what functions do I use and some important things I might need to know about them, but not the full gory picture )
• Besides for displaying bitmaps, why would I want to use a graphics context and how would I go about doing it (in a nutshell)?
• What function(s) would I use to toggle a menu command on/off (grayed or un-grayed)?
• What are a list of functions for editing/changing a dialog's controls (like their properties, values, fields, size, location, color, font, alignment, etc.)?
• What function do I use to switch between open dialogs within the parent window?
  
  For Microsoft Visual C++ resource editor, how do I:
• Make resource a dialog and its controls scale when I resize the parent window or the dialog itself (like if I wanted a list box to always be located 25% of the way inward inside the dialog and if I wanted it also to scale at its 25% position according to the dialog's size)?
• How do I stop MSV C++ from reverting all my IDs to their raw integer equivalents? (that is, if I enter in "ID_BLAHBLAH", with the value 102 in its definition, and once I reopen that resource the ID field where I entered "ID_BLAHLBAH" has now changed to 102)

Thx a lot to whoever can help me out!

 

[palbano]

[*]How do I open an URL in a web browser from within my program?
ShellExecute/Ex
[*]Having gotton the Open and Save dialogs to work (gets the file's name), how do I perform file IO? (like what functions do I use and some important things I might need to know about them, but not the full gory picture )
STL iostream library
[*]Besides for displaying bitmaps, why would I want to use a graphics context and how would I go about doing it (in a nutshell)?
To perform in memory image manipulation, Obtain a handle to a Device Context GetDC(...)/CreateDC(...) then use the various GDI functions to manipulate the DC
[*]What function(s) would I use to toggle a menu command on/off (grayed or un-grayed)?
EnableMenuItem(…)
[*]What are a list of functions for editing/changing a dialog's controls (like their properties, values, fields, size, location, color, font, alignment, etc.)?
Dialog controls are windows and can be manipulated as all windows can using their HWND
[*]What function do I use to switch between open dialogs within the parent window?
SetFocus(…)

For Microsoft Visual C++ resource editor, how do I:
[*]Make resource a dialog and its controls scale when I resize the parent window or the dialog itself (like if I wanted a list box to always be located 25% of the way inward inside the dialog and if I wanted it also to scale at its 25% position according to the dialog's size)?
No such resource exists, you have to write code that creates that behavior
[*]How do I stop MSV C++ from reverting all my IDs to their raw integer equivalents? (that is, if I enter in "ID_BLAHBLAH", with the value 102 in its definition, and once I reopen that resource the ID field where I entered "ID_BLAHLBAH" has now changed to 102)
No idea what you mean by that

-pete

 

[TuxedoTemplar]

Hey thx alot for the help, even if it didn't completely answer all my questions (I didn't figure it would, but its a start, which is better than nothing.) Anyway I have one more and I'll stop bugging all of you, and this one I need to get resolved rather quickly:

How do I make a control that functions like a windows-style explorer? Say I want to list certain types of items according to whatever properties I define them to have. Lets say for understanding purposes they are basically strings, and I want them listed in an explorer-style control box according to either their size, lexographic position (alphabetic order), index number (their position in the file they come from), and context (another thing I have defined). Basically in the list I want to have it like Explorer->View->Details, such that you can see the list of items by their name in one column, and then their properties in the other columns. I suppose to make the question easier I'll ask this: is there already something to do this or would I have to make it from scratch (from other dialog controls, I mean)?

Thx again for the help!

 

[apatterno]

The UI of Explorer uses two controls: A tree view control on the left and a list view control on the right. Look at the list view control documentation for how to use the LVM messages.