How to Set a Font for All Child Windows

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This article shows how to change the font for all child windows using only one line with a callback function.

The idea is to create a callback function that is passed to Win32 API function ::EnumChildWindows(). Somewhere in the application, global CFont object is created. Pointer to this object is passed as a third argument in EnumChildWindows(). This argument is passed to a callback function together with a handle to a child window. Using these 2 arguments, the function changes the font for the child window.

Using this technique, it is very easy to:

• Change the font for main frame window, its child views and a status bar from CMainFrame::OnCreate().
• Change the font for all dialog controls from OnInitDialog().

The Callback function looks like this:

// lParam is a pointer to CFont object
BOOL __stdcall SetChildFont(HWND hwnd, LPARAM lparam)
{
   CFont *pFont = (CFont*)lparam;
   CWnd *pWnd = CWnd::FromHandle(hwnd);
   pWnd->SetFont(pFont);
   return TRUE;
}

This callback function is used from OnCreate() or OnInitDialog() in the following way:

...
// g_Font is an object of type CFont or derived from CFont
EnumChildWindows(m_hWnd, ::SetChildFont, &g_Font);
...

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