Menus and Other Resources

A resource is binary data that you can add to the executable file of a Windows-based application. A resource can be either standard or defined. The data in a standard resource describes an icon, cursor, menu, dialog box, bitmap, enhanced metafile, font, accelerator table, message-table entry, string-table entry, or version information. An application-defined resource, also called a custom resource, contains any data required by a specific application.

In This Section

Name	Description
Introduction to Resources	Provides an overview of resources.
Carets	Discusses carets, which are blinking lines, blocks, or bitmaps in the client area of a window.
Cursors	Discusses cursors, which are small pictures whose location on the screen is controlled by a pointing device, such as a mouse, pen, or trackball.
Icons	Discusses icons, which are bitmap images combined with a mask to create transparent areas in the picture.
Keyboard Accelerators	Discusses keyboard accelerators, which are keystrokes that provide access to the commands for an application.
Menus	Discusses menus.
Strings	Discusses the string functions.
Version Information	Discusses the version-information resource.
Resource Compiler	Discusses the resource compiler, Rc.exe, and resource-definition files.
Package resource indexing (PRI) reference	A set of APIs for working with a resource indexer. A resource indexer is used to generate package resource index (PRI) files for a UWP app.

For more information about creating message resources, see Message Compiler.