When I create a new program, I want to concentrate my coding time on the design of the interface and the guts, not the implementation of the interface. This is one area in which the current paradigm has failed, in my mind. Anyhow, this chapter shows you how to work with the current batch of tools. Dialog boxes get their share of abuse from me too, as they fail in many of the same ways, but nonetheless, they are what we have to work with, and are explained in chapter thirteen. The various types of menus are covered, the styles, the resource file, bitmaps in menus, and so on.
List boxes are the first true PM control introduced, in chapter fifteen.
Setting them up, selecting the first item, painting them, and more are all covered. In chapter sixteen we meet buttons, all five types. These are fairly easy to deal with, and the chapter is short. Chapter seventeen deals with entry fields, which are also fairly easy, and this chapter too is short. MLEs are a control which are supposed to be a boon to anyone needing to write a program which accepts or displays many lines of data or text, but due to certain bugs and limitations, their use has severe compromises.