Description
In this book, Stan Mitchell describes the Windows 95 File System, as well as the opportunities and challenges it brings for developers. Its "hands-on" approach will help developers become better equipped to make design decisions using the new Win95 File System features. Includes a diskette containing MULTIMON, a general-purpose monitor for examining Windows internals.
Full Description
This book details the Windows 95 File System, depicting the role it plays in providing opportunities and challenges for developers. Over the course of the book, Stan Mitchell progressively strips away the layers of the Win95 File System, which reside in a component named Installable File System Manager or IFSMgr, providing the reader with information that is crucial for effective File System development. With the knowledge gained from this book, developers will have the ability to make crucial design decisions with the vast amount of new File System features.
At present, there is a dearth of information about the Windows 95 File System. Microsoft has documented the Installable File System (IFS) in the Windows 95 device driver kit, yet it lacks example programs and background information on the File System's architecture or design. Stan's book, however, takes a "hands-on" approach and, where appropriate, demonstrates ideas with example code. The reader gets a view of the File System like a building that is going up, before the floors and walls are erected and the plumbing is in clear view.
The book doesn't attempt to rebuild Windows 95 from the ground up, but it does trace through Windows 95 from the "Big Bang" to its quiescent state (Kernel idle). Armed with this background, the reader will approach examples of the Windows 95 operating system modes in the book, and examine how the File System is accessed from each of them.
This book is vital to the large audience of people who don't write device drivers for a living, but who need to know about this new File System in Win95 that, appearances aside, is quite different from what the PC world has used for the last ten years. Includes a diskette containing MULTIMON, a general-purpose monitor developed by Stan Mitchell for examining Windows internals.
Colophon
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal featured on the cover of Inside the Windows 95 File System is a representative of one of the more than 65,000 species of mollusks. There are six classes of mollusk. The largest of these classes is the gastropod. The coiled shell on the animal on the cover of this book is typical of many, but not all, gastropods. This mollusk may be an Astraea Heliotropium, a native of the waters surrounding new Zealand. The Astraea Heliotropium grows to a size of three to four inches, and has a lovely iridescent purplish-pink shell.
No species shows as much diversity of shape and size as the mollusk. Despite this diversity, most mollusks have the same basic body plan. The word mollusk means "soft bodied." The soft mollusk body is composed of a combined head-foot containing the central nervous system, and a layer of tissue called the mantle that covers the internal organs. The mantle also secretes the shell that covers the mollusk's body. The shell is part of animal and grows with it. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.
The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker 5.0 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 5.0 by Chris Reilley. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.
