The tutorials start with the most basic Windows program, the windows equivalent of "hello world!", Winnie. Then we move on to a more Generic program, which serves as a skeleton for a simple Windows application. Then we discuss various Controls. Using these controls one can build a complete dialog-based application, whose main window is a dialog. We are then ready to discuss a Generic Dialog, a framework with which one can quickly build specific dialogs.

To do some simple graphics one needs a Canvas object. You use Pens and Brushes to paint on the canvas.

More advanced topics include programming with Threads with a practical example of a Folder Watcher — a program that watches directories for changes.

Modern windows programming requires some knowledge of the Shell API, which leads us to the discussion of OLE and COM. We show how one can encapsulate OLE in C++ to create Smart OLE. OLE is also used in Automation, which lets your application talk to other applications.

Controls are nothing but specialized windows. You can easily create your own controls, as evidenced by the Splitter Bar tutorial.

For graphics programmer, we give a short introduction on using Bitmaps for animation and a more advanced tutorial on using Direct Draw.

The Windows Driver Model has two separate but equally important aspects. First, the core model describes the standard structure for device drivers. Second, Microsoft provides a series of bus and class drivers for common types of devices.

The core WDM model describes how device drivers are installed and started, and how they should service user requests and interact with hardware. A WDM device driver must fit into the Plug and Play (PnP) system that lets users plug in devices that can be configured in software.

Microsoft provides a series of system drivers that have all the basic functionality needed to service many standard types of device. The first type of system driver supports different types of bus, such as the Universal Serial Bus (USB), IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and Audio port devices. Other class drivers implement standard Windows facilities such as Human Input Devices (HID) and kernel streaming. Finally, the Still Image Architecture (STI) provides a framework for handling still images, scanners, etc.

These system class drivers can make it significantly easier to write some types of device driver. For example, the USB system drivers handle all the low-level communications across this bus. A well defined interface is made available to other drivers. This makes it fairly straightforward to issue requests to the USB bus.