title: How to efficiently update a large group of controls from a background thread
body: <p>Let's say you have a window with a bunch of property controls -- i.e., some text edit controls, date-time pickers, comboboxes, etc.  And then you have background worker thread for obtaining the data that will go into those controls.  And as the background thread obtains the necessary data for each control, it calls functions like <code>SetWindowText</code>, etc.</p>
  <p>Will calling functions like <code>SetWindowText</code> defeat the purpose of getting the data asynchronously on a background thread?  In other words, will they make a lot of the activity synchronous?  Should any such functions be manually changed to a <code>PostMessage</code> calls?</p>
  <p>Or are there any other ways to make updating the controls more efficient?  For example, would it likely make any difference to turn redraw off and then back on once all controls are set?</p>
  <p>Thank you for any input.</p>