Finding Installed Applications with VC++
Finding applications installed on a machine (the ones that you see in Control Panel Add/Remove programs) could be a little bit tricky, because there isn’t a bulletproof API or method. Each of the...
View ArticleC++ Renaissance at Microsoft
At the beginning of this year, Microsoft announced a “C++ renaissance”. Quoting from the description of a Channel 9 video with Craig Symonds and Mohsen Agsen: C++ is currently undergoing a renaissance....
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Windows Runtime
Windows Runtime, or shortly WinRT, is a new runtime (siting on top of the Windows kernel) that allows developers to write Metro style applications for Windows 8, using a variety of languages including...
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C++, WinRT and Partial Classes
Partial classes are finally available to C++. Sort of. It’s not part of the new C++11 standard, it’s part of the C++/CX language developed by Microsoft for targeting WinRT on Windows 8. Partial classes...
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WinRT and winmd Files
If you tried the Win8 Developer Preview and built WinRT components (native or managed) you noticed the .winmd files. The name stands for Windows Meta Data and the format of these files is the same used...
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Things I like about native development with C++/CX
Visual Studio 11 brings many new things for native development, including support for new features from C++11 (unfortunately not all), or ability to write Metro apps with C++/CX including modeling the...
View ArticleA tale of two flags: DS_CONTROL and WS_EX_CONTROLPARENT
I recently ran into problems with an MFC application that was hosting some Windows Form user control in a modal dialog; the application hanged after it lost focus. The problem was the window received...
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Keyboard input and TAB navigation between WPF controls in a Win32 application
It is possible to host WPF controls in a Win32 application, and the other way around, but because of the differences betweeb these technologies there are various issues that can appear. One of these is...
View Articleerror C3510: cannot locate dependent type library ”...
Problem I have recently migrated a C# 2.0 project registered for COM interop to .NET 4.5 and when I imported the type library in a C++ project with no_registry, suddenly I got some errors because the...
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Bindings for DataGridView hosted in an MFC application
A WinForms DataGridView control has the ability to automatically generate its columns and populate from a specified data source (which can be a DataSet, a simple list or something else). All you have...
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cppconlib: A C++ library for working with the Windows console
Many years ago I published on my blog a helper class for working with the Windows console that was wrapping the Windows console API. Looking back at it I realized it was a pretty naive implementation....
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Render the screen of a Windows Store App to a bitmap in Windows 8.1
In WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone it is possible to render a visual object into a bitmap using the RenderTargetBitmap. This functionality, that I find pretty basic, was not available for Windows...
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Working with the Settings Charm for Windows 8.1 Store Applications
Windows 8 features a Settings charm to display both application (the top part) and system (the bottom part) settings (you get it from swiping from the side of the screen). The system provides two entry...
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You Chemical Name – My First Windows Store App
My first Windows Store app (for Window 8.1) is now available in Windows Store. It’s called Your Chemical Name and shows names (and text) using chemical elements symbols in the Breaking Bad style. The...
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CRT Refactored in Visual Studio “14″
Visual Studio “14″ CTP ships with a refactored C Runtime. The first thing you’ll notice is that msvcrXX.dll has been replaced by three new DLLs: appcrtXX.dll, desktopcrtXX.dll and vcruntimeXX.ddl...
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Changing Windows password complexity requirements
I recently encountered a problem creating new logins with SQL Server. Something that has worked for years suddenly stopped with the following error: Password validation failed. The password does not...
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What’s New in Visual Studio 2017 for C++ Development
Visual Studio 2017 has been officially launched today. The release notes contain a summary of all the changes available in the new version. This post is focused on the changes for C++ development. The...
View ArticleHow to determine what CLR versions are installed using C++
You may have multiple versions of the .NET framework installed and used on your machine. The framework has two components: the set of assemblies that provide functionalities for your application, and...
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My open-source projects are moved to GitHub
I used to have several open-source projects available on CodePlex. At the end of 2017, the site was put in read-only mode and it will probably be closed at some point. Therefore, I have decided to move...
View ArticleUsing the curl library from C++ on Windows
curl is a project containing a command line tool and a library that can be used to transfer data using a variety of protocols, including, of course, HTTP and HTTPS. The library API is written in C, but...
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