Windows GUI

[sonodajohnson]

First things first, I'm new here and am impressed by the wealth of knowledge on this site. For some background, I'm a mechanical engineering student, so I'm one of those cavemen playing around with levers and gears lol, so my knowledge of coding and computers is not...great to say the least.

That said, I built a simple tablet out of an old laptop I had lying around. I use this at school and for the most part it's great. However, it's rather obvious I need to use the stylus in order to do a lot of basic things.

Now for the question...having looked around, there are developers making customized GUIs for Win7. They look interesting and was wondering where I can learn to create my own. I fully realize this is a daunting task, and frankly, I'll be buying one of the available ones, but for my own personal knowledge I'd love to learn.

So what programming languages do I learn? Where can I learn the basics of GUI design? I'm filled with questions.

Thanks all for any insight you may give me.

[PeejAvery]

Rewriting an OS shell is ridiculously intensive work. Not only does it take countless man hours, but also a deep understanding of lower level programming languages such as C.

[Max Peck]

You are talking about full-time work for a long period of time before you could even BEGIN to rewrite the front-end of an O/S like Windows. It took Microsoft millions of man-hours to perfect the GUI in Windows. Just customize what's already there and enjoy it!

-Max

[sonodajohnson]

I realize it's intensive work and again this is simply a side hobby, nothing serious, but I know I will learn a lot on the journey. I would definitely appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Max, you mentioned customizing, can you elaborate? Like I said before, I'll be buying one of the available touch GUis available, but I'd love to learn what you had in mind.

[Max Peck]

I realize it's intensive work and again this is simply a side hobby, nothing serious, but I know I will learn a lot on the journey. I would definitely appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Max, you mentioned customizing, can you elaborate? Like I said before, I'll be buying one of the available touch GUis available, but I'd love to learn what you had in mind.

I simply meant the customization any normal (or power) user might do, not from a programming standpoint.

If you want a good idea of what's involved, try writing just a program under Windows using MFC or even a more advanced technology like .Net. User-Interface development can be intense. However ... it can be fun.

If you decide to do it using MFC, you're going to find that it's extremely detailed work even to just get screen controls to paint in the proper locations. You won't be bored I can vouch for that!

-Max