Programming Windows by Charles Petzold - I live by it. It goes from basic windows to advanced graphics and a little bit of sockets and everything in between. A definite must-have for anybody that calls themselves a Win32 programmer.

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"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams."
- Willy Wonka

"Windows 98 Programming From the Ground Up", by Herbert Shildt. He is much easier to read than Petzold, but you will probably get the C.P. book when (if) you ever decide to do traditional (non-game non-directx) C windows programs ... which I doubt you ever will ... because by the time you get through learning and making a DirectX program ... .NET will already be availible for the people making ''normal'' apps .. so why go back and use C to directly access and old API that has no less than 3 better alternatives ... 1) Visual Basic for simple tools ... 2) Visual C++ and COM interfaces (like DirectX) for games and other heavyweight apps 3) C# for current generation client/server access. So ... you''ll want to know the C Win32 API stuff .. but only well enough to feel comortable with the code that your Object-Oriented C++ classes must interfaces with, or utilize for low level functionality.

Good Luck

Actually, most of your statements are true. I do web programming and have been preparing for the .NET move which is probably coming around the next year or so. I''m just wanting to be able to use the WIN32 API, and know the base windows language when authors pull out things in their book that is not DirectX programming. I do want to be able to use C++ to do other things beside programming.. access databases, etc. Oh well, just thought I''d ask. C# is on my list of things to learn though.


Dave