Does anyone know how the GUI for Winamp (or anything else similar) is drawn to the screen? Do they use windowed mode with DirectDraw or Windows graphics functions?

hi,

I think winamp use the normal WIN GDI mean every window has an
Device Handle. The Device handle can use for Grafik operation like BitBli() and so on. I think winamp use the WM_PAINT messeage to owner draw the whole main window and the child controls are subclassed ors with his own Message handler.

I''ve found a litle demo you can check this out to understand how this work :D try this http://www.codeproject.com/gdi/ there you can found many tutorials about GDI

hope this help''s

Imp

That''s what I was suspecting.

Thanks for the link. The site looks interesting.

I''ve made a fully-skinned app like Winamp, and I must warn you that it''s lots harder that just handling WM_PAINT. Drawing is the easiest part. There are tons of messages you''ll have to handle to make the app behave properly. Sadly, I didn''t find a single source of truly helpful information on doing this when I wanted to, so I had to figure it out by myself. I''d tell you how to do it, but it would take a long time to explain it all, so, if you end up really needing more help, I will, but do try yourself first.