The New Look and Feel

The biggest challenge you face in adapting applications to 32-bit mode is handling the enhanced Windows interface. Visual Basic gives you some of these features free, but others require additional work. A few demand serious hacking with the Windows API.

Before you can figure out what you have to do, you need to know the results you want. That’s where the Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design (Microsoft Press, 1995) comes in. If you want to get the true Windows spirit, you should get to know this book. It’s like a tourist brochure that tells you what Windows looks like and why you should go there. The following sections are a preliminary Visual Basic street map that tells you how to get to some of the more interesting places in Windows.