NetUIHWND and DirectUIHWND [closed]

Yes, it has been around for a while already. But it gets especially a lots of usage in Windows7. Unfortunately, they keep this one to themselves, it is undocumented. You can try to reverse-engineer it, use a ListView as a guide to what it might do. But your code will almost certainly break in the next version of Windows. Which I think was the point of not documenting it, they need something they don't have to keep backwards compatible to be able to improve the look-and-feel of the operating system.

NetUIHWND and DirectUIHWND are the Win32 class types for different GUI toolsets. From Win32 perspective they are a self drawn panel.

So you wouldn't use these classes directly, you would use the other GUI toolsets to build the UI.

Not sure about the Messenger UI, but you can use the ribbon control in your own apps.

• On WTL: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vista/RibbonUI.aspx
• On MFC: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb983906.aspx