Contents  Introduction  The Design  The Plan  Implementation  Window  Management  Coordinate  Systems  Window Drawing  Window  Messages  Wrapping it up  Printable version     The Series  Part I  Part II  Part III  Part IV

Welcome to Part II of the "Developing a GUI Using C++ And DirectX" Series. You can find Part I of the article here. Continuing with the overall theme (showing how I implemented a GUI for my upcoming game, Quaternion), this article will explain the many mysteries of windows. We'll look at how a window tree works, develop a plan to implement our GUI, and dive into the specifics of creating a window class, including drawing, messaging, coordinate systems, and all sorts of other madness.

We'll be using C++ heavily here. If you're rusty on pure virtual functions, dynamic_cast'ing, etc., grab a C++ book and brush up before continuing.

Without further banter, let's get started.

Next : The Design