Windows API GUI programming

I'm working on a Project with outdated, very old looking GUI (the used GUI framework is more than 10 years old)

Since the used programming language is Eiffel, there are almost no good libraries for GUI developme开发者_开发百科nt. Although Wrappers for C libraries exist, it's not that easy to wrap something like Qt with them. The current GUI framework uses the Windows API to create windows, widgets and so on. But as stated - it's very old.

Now i would like to learn more about how to use the Windows API directly to create state of the art GUI's

Can someone recommend any reading material?

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"Windows Programming" by Charles Petzold is an excellent start on Win32 API programming.
It won't show you how to create a WPF-grade interface but it will show you how to create a basic average application.

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It doesn't take a lot of surgery to turn on Windows Visual Styles and get an instant new look. If your toolset doesn't allow creating resources then take a look at mt.exe in the Windows SDK.