The text assumes that the reader already knows C++ Object Oriented Programming and is skilled in allocating and using objects and in deriving classes with virtual functions.

The book begins with the very fundamentals and, in a step by step, gradient manner, develops most all of the basic Windows programming techniques. There are often many different ways to accomplish the same task. So as you move from example to example, expect to see alternative approaches illustrated. This book is not a reference manual; rather, expect to see the "whys" and "how comes" that lie behind many of the approaches and techniques. It is my opinion that if you have a feel for what is really going on, you can do a better job of programming and debugging.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this book are the sample programs which are designed to provide you with a usable shell or model to follow in your applications. The later chapter examples are not just snippets of coding that illustrate the topic at hand, but rather are more robust, real world examples. Two chapters illustrate how printing and print preview are done. In Chapter 7, you will see how to create various dialogs. In Chapter 9, one sample program shows you several methods of displaying a bmp image on the screen as well as numerous "special effects" to catch your user’s attention. One Chapter 14 sample program shows you how to setup animated presentations for business use. Alternatively another Chapter 14 sample shows how to begin some game animation using the fast DIB Section. In Chapter 15, the complex document-view architecture is discussed in depth. Here splitter windows are used to present a left narrow window containing the editable company sales data while on the right side is a bar chart plot of that data which automatically redraws itself as the sales data are changed by the user.