Subclassing and Hooking with Visual Basic

A Word of Warning

The techniques presented in this book make extensive use of the Win32 API and pointers. As you know, VB does not give us direct access to pointers. Instead we must use API functions to convert these pointers into information that VB can use.

As with using pointers in C, we must also take care when handling pointers in VB. Failing to do so will result in your application behaving unpredictably or crashing.

Incorrectly setting up and calling Win32 API functions is another source of problems. To function correctly, API functions must not only be declared correctly in VB, but also have their arguments passed in properly.

I will not be covering in any great detail how to set up and call Win32 API functions in this book. It is up to you to make sure the API functions that you use are declared and used properly. For more information on the topic of Win32 API functions, you can read Steven Roman’s book entitled Win32 API Programming With Visual Basic, published by O’Reilly & Associates.