Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition

Using the Timer: Three Methods

If you need a timer for the entire duration of your program, you’ll probably call SetTimer from the WinMain function or while processing the WM_CREATE message, and KillTimer on exiting WinMain or in response to a WM_DESTROY message. You can use a timer in one of three ways, depending on the arguments to the SetTimer call.

Method One

This method, the easiest, causes Windows to send WM_TIMER messages to the normal window procedure of the application. The SetTimer call looks like this:

SetTimer (hwnd, 1, uiMsecInterval, NULL) ;

The first argument is a handle to the window whose window procedure will receive the WM_TIMER messages. The second argument is the timer ID, which should be a nonzero number. I have arbitrarily set ...