Windows stores attributes that define every window. For a Visual Basic window, you can usually get at the attributes through properties. For a non–Visual Basic window, you have to use a function. Sometimes access is through an orthogonal pair of Get/Set functions. Sometimes the interface is more obscure.
Table 6-1 compares the Windows Way and the Basic Way of dealing with properties. (Some of the properties that you might expect to see listed here—color, for example—are actually properties of the device context, not the window, and are therefore discussed in Chapter 7.)