Is MFC outdated ? And if so what to use to make VS C/C++ GUI's ?

[KJ78]

I come from programming C/C++ on Unix and MCU's, and have now swithed to learning MS windows GUI programming, and I'm using VS 2010 prof. I'm working on a project where I need to capture the graphical output from a window and do some image processing on it. I have here on codegure found two ways to capture the output from another window, but there are both based on MFC, even though as I understand it the code part to do the capture is only based on native windows API's. To leaen MFC I have now read a book that contains some info about it (Horton's VS C++ 2010), the book is great and well written but not so deep on MFC, so I'm therefore searching to find more books about MFC. But I can see on Amazon that allmost all books about MFC are at least 10 yeard old ! So my question is if MFC is outdated? And if so what is best way to make advanced graphical GUI's in C/C++ today. I am completely new to VS and I am confused with all the technologies it offer and which one I can use with C/C++. Can I mix .net with C/C++ and/or what technologies are worth learning?

Horton's great book also introduce CLR, and I can see that there are several newer books about it. Is CLR then the way forward with VS C/C++ programming? I ask this because right now I would like to learn and concentrate on only one C++ GUI technology but would like to learn a technology that will be used in the future! But it seems as MS is focusing a lot more on .net technologies!

Is the truth that MS is leaving MFC and CLR behind in favour of C# or VB with WPF and .net technologies?

I suppose that people reading this thread knows all or a lot about VS GUI technoligies, so please come with your suggestions. Thanks.

[Quantumcat]

I work in a little IT company that makes point-of-sale systems, accounting systems, livestock management systems etc, and we use MFC exclusively. It is probably because the boss is too cheap to pay us/hire an extra programmer to spend time converting all our current programs, or maybe not. We will probably still be using MFC for a few years to come.
Although, maybe we aren't the best example, since some of our clients are still using our old DOS system and I am currently in the process of converting one DOS program's functionality into an MFC program. Maybe being in the country we are automatically five years behind everybody else :-)
But it goes to show that people are still using MFC!

[KJ78]

Hi Quantumcat

Thanks for your reply. I think that MFC is very fast and therefore might be the best solution when speed is an issue (otherwise if very high speed is needed for gaming etc.). But after have been doing some research I'm now learning and using wxWidgets as I then easily can make my programs multi platform. Also wxWidgets seems to be very fast.

[ahoodin]

Well yes Windows Forms is the current generation, although the idea has a very long flagpole indeed, since windows forms is part of .net. You can make a windows form with managed c++ (C++.net), or C# or vb.net etc. Windows Forms are also multi-platform.

Here have a look:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscct...informs01.aspx

Is the truth that MS is leaving MFC and CLR behind in favour of C# or VB with WPF and .net technologies?

I suppose that people reading this thread knows all or a lot about VS GUI technoligies, so please come with your suggestions. Thanks.