Subclassing and Hooking with Visual Basic

Preface

I came about the idea to write this book when I noticed that there was no one place you could go to learn about subclassing and hooking. Originally, these two subjects were geared toward more advanced C++ developers. Visual Basic (VB) developers were never able to use either of these techniques in a pure VB solution until the advent of Versions 5 and 6, when the language allowed developers to tap into subclassing and hooking techniques. Unfortunately, there remained a problem of insufficient information to help the VB developer understand how, when, where, and why to use these techniques.

In doing some research, I came to the realization that few VB developers had a solid grasp of these techniques. In fact, these techniques were being underused and even misused. Developers were creating incredibly complex and hard-to-maintain code, code that could be greatly simplified if the programmer had only taken advantage of subclassing, hooking, or even both techniques in tandem. This book is meant not only to teach subclassing and hooking techniques, but also to be a single resource from which developers can get information and answers to their questions about these techniques.