Win32 or .NET Framework advice please?

[Gerald]

Hello,
A few weeks back I joined this site and received some wonderful help. So thanks once again to those that replied. Briefly, I was just getting into C++ after many years using C in real time embedded environments. There's more in my profile. Suffice to say I cracked on and, with help, I have re-written some applications in C++. Obviously still some way to go but that will come with experience. I installed Visual C++ Express as advised, ( to get me started rather than use Watcom or cross compilers - of which I am used to ). This has been a great tool so far as learning goes. However, I find myself in somewhat of a dilema! Some of the applications I intend to implement,( PC based ), will comminucate with external devices via USB etc. That is not the problem. The problem is that I will make it a Windows based application with menus, buttons etc. Now, do I use win32 apps or the .NET framework. I have used the .NET framework and found it very easy to implement buttons, menus and other 'controls' but I feel a little out of touch with the code whereas with the win32 I have more control of what I create - although it takes more time.
So, the question is, what route do I take, win32 or the .NET framework?
Excuse my ignorance in this matter but any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Regards,
Gerald.

[Bazzy]

Win32 allows you to writing real code and to run in all the computers with Windows but the API is in C.
You can find some tools as ResEdit to create windows as with .Net ( http://www.resedit.net/ )

.Net has a visual gui designer integrated in the IDE but you then won't be using real C++ but C++ CLI and your program would only run on computers with .Net installed.

I would recommend using Win32
BTW other cross platform GUI libraries would be even better ( eg: Qt which also has a visual designer )

[Gerald]

Thank you Bazzy. You've helped make my mind up. It will be Win32 as I don't want to digress away from C++, ( which was the main aim afterall ! ). It was the ease of using the controls in the IDE .NET that attracted me. But having searched around I came across some sites with source etc. This one;

http://zetcode.com/tutorials/winapi/

has explained quite a few things so I will continue to explore/search. Any similar sites that you may know would be gratefully appreciated but thank you once again for your most needed help.

Regards,
Gerald Scott.

[Bazzy]

The best site for win32 documentation is MSDN but is hard finding info there: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
I think you should google for some tutorials and ask here when you get problems.
In the sourcecode section you can find some helpful examples: http://www.cplusplus.com/src/

[george135]

You should avoid turorials (written by kids, not professional, there is more in the 1st chapter of Petzold..)
Read MSDN, the Petzold http://www.charlespetzold.com/pw5/index.html for basic apis
the Richter, the Russinovich books for advanced apis,
, the Win32 grp (http://tinyurl.com/cmhb5g) for adv. & undocumented apis.