Thread: confused about adding controls to main window

hello,
i'm trying to learn the win32 api with a tutorial, we made a lot of exercises with dialogBoxes to learn the windows controls(buttons,editBox,etc),. the typical application is:

an empty main window with a menu where you click it and displays a dialog box with some controls, this dialog box and its controls is made in a .rc file.
ok i cant find a way to "add" some controls to the "main" application window without the use of dialog's, you can add controls to the main window only created at runtime??
thanks for any help or ligth where i should look for this kind of sample how to add buttons, edit boxes etc to a "main window" that has not dialog boxes

in other words i need a simple window with a button in it and when you click that button something happens, i know how to create the window, etc but cant figure out how to add that button

thanks for any help, and please excuse my poor english