The Win32 API provides many functions, messages, and predefined controls to help create and manage dialog boxes, thus making it easier to develop the user interface for an application. This overview describes the dialog box functions and messages and explains how to use them to create and use dialog boxes.
The Win32 API also provides many predefined, or "common," dialog boxes that support commands, such as File Open and File Print. Applications that use these commands should use the common dialog boxes to prompt for the same user input, regardless of the type of application carrying out the commands. For more information about using common dialog boxes in your applications, see Common Dialog Box Library.