How can I use a resource file (*.rc) to style a dialog-based application

Question

How can I use a resource file (*.rc) to style a dialog-based application?

I can use CreateWindow or CreateWindowEx to create the main window of an application. And some of the arguments of CreateWindow or CreateWindowEx define the styles of a dialogbox. But I want to style it using resource file (*.rc) instead of the way of by pass style arguments to function.

Could someone give me some snippets?

Someobody said I can call DialogBox , and give second argument the the style template. Does this create a confict between CreateWindow and the *.rc file? Or can I use both of them at the same time?

Answer 1

Use CreateDialog . It handles wrapping the call to CreateWindowEx as well as posting the WM_INITDLG and WM_SETFONT messages if needed. There's an example linked from the docs on MSDN.

You can get information about the content of the resource file here in the documentation for DialogEx .

Answer 2

Start a new Win32 Project and let it auto-generate the code. Change the WinMain function to look like this:

int APIENTRY _tWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
                     HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                     LPTSTR    lpCmdLine,
                     int       nCmdShow)
{

    UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER(hPrevInstance);
    UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER(lpCmdLine);

    DialogBox(hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_ABOUTBOX), NULL, About);
    return 0;
}

You may want to add a call to MoveWindow() in the WM_INITDIALOG message handler to move the window to a better spot on the screen.