Dialog Bars in Win API?

Is it possible to do a dialog bar with the Win API? I can't find anything searcing the web. I've done dialog bars in MFC, but never did any with the API.

I have a suite of ancient Win API programs dating back to at least Windows 2.0 that I am maintaining. It's been updated to Win32, but most of the code is original. One program has a sort of dialog bar kind of thing on the side that is ancient. The comments on the code supporting this said it was rewritten in 1988. The most recent comment is from 1989.

We're running into some problems with the display and I need to make some changes. There is something akin to a spin control that takes some unusual chain and link structure. I've never seen anything like this, but it appears to be something from the early days of Windows that has been carried along all this time.

If it was possible to replace this display piece with a dialog bar, I could use the features from the modern controls and could trash the reams of code supporting these ancient controls.

I just can't find anything on dialog bars that doesn't also refer to doing them in MFC. Are they called something else in the API world, or is it just not possible?

Dialog bars have no support in WinAPI, and this way are entirely implemented by MFC. So, you need to re-invent the thing. :)

for more GUI stuff also look at wxWidgets , wxpack for visual studio or Nokia QT , there is not development happening in MFC MS abandoned it in foavour of .NET , The way MFC stands it was never a complete framework to begin with.

For MFC, I use Prof-UIS. It is well supported. It does a lot of things MFC never did.

I do prefer MFC over .NET. Distribution of a natively compiled program is much easier and you don't have to worry about Microsoft making a change to the .NET libraries that mess everything up.

This package that I'm supporting is very, very old code. Development started for Windows 1.0 and was first released for Windows 2.0. There are comments in there for work arounds put in to deal with compiler bugs back in 1989.

After we get various bugs fixed I am going to get going on an all new UI using Prof-UIS, but this ancient code isn't going to support anything but Windows API.

One of the apps has a side bar that looks like a neolithic dialog bar. I've run into some problems with the ancient way they did a spinner control. It took me an entire day of deep analysis just to figure out what they were trying to do. I've been programming a long time and I've never seen anything quite like this.

I thought if I replaced the whole thing with a more modern API dialog bar, that would solve the problem. However, since it can't be done, I came up with a work around that gets the job done.

All I need to do is get this code stable so my customer won't be getting complaints from their customers. Then I can move on to a more permanent fix.

Bill