[MFC] Required reading list

Dear All,

I am starting to fill a list of books that I need to learn to program in MFC.
The goal is producing an SDI application using Visual Studio 2008 which will have three different views (according to the login) and one document (no MDI).

The view will probably contain ACTIVE X controls that I will implement (so I need to learn this as well). Multithreading computation will be performed in the view. The project will have a solution explorer pane (with a tree view) and support database (headers only). Each node of the treeview will lunch a separate computation. I will need to save the document and be able to submit the document via e.mail (MAPI support option choosen). I have prepeared a basic exercise including all these concepts in order to add up all those together step by step.

I start listing the books, please contribute and I will keep editing this list:

BASICS:
Charles Petzold's "Programming Windows"

MFC:
Visual C++ 2008 by Ivoer Horton
Programming Windows with MFC, Second Edition (Hardcover) - J. Prosise

ACTIVE X:
msdn documentation


Thanks!

You can't go wrong with Prosise.

What do you hope to gain from the ActiveX controls?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pengCC

I am starting to fill a list of books that I need to learn to program in MFC.

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Why don't you just search? You're not the first person asking this kind of question here. Sample thread.

Dear Igor,

I created this thread since searching using codeguru's search engine and typing: "MFC books" or "Visual C++ books" provided 0 results. I assume you knew about the thread that u linked since u replied to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arjay

What do you hope to gain from the ActiveX controls?

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Why have u asked me this question? Is ACTIVE X an obsolete technology or do you assume that I will not understand the use of it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jeron

You can't go wrong with Prosise.

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Thanks for that, I added it to the list

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pengCC

Dear Igor,

I created this thread since searching using codeguru's search engine and typing: "MFC books" or "Visual C++ books" provided 0 results. I assume you knew about the thread that u linked since u replied to it.

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I have no idea how did you try your search.
I've just tried to search for mfc books and got 803 results. :cool:

..thanks for that.. I was using the codeguru engine searching on the entire website. But now that you showed this results I tried to make a search only on the furm section and I found 803 threads as well (http://www.codeguru.com/forum/search...archid=5614207), even if not all of them are relevant there are some good ones.. I think that the search engine for the entire website is not as good as google and I expected that being a "codeguru" website..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pengCC

Dear Igor,

I created this thread since searching using codeguru's search engine and typing: "MFC books" or "Visual C++ books" provided 0 results. I assume you knew about the thread that u linked since u replied to it.

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Dear Peng,

You really do think I remember about every post I made here, years ago? I've found it by searching for something like "book recommendation". ;)

Anyway, I think you could visit as well www.amazon.com and make a search for "MFC Programming" as long as you are looking up books. And here you could ask people for their opinion and recommendations about the books you found there.

PS. And the one more thing I would ask you as well: please be patient to people here and their asking back, as nobody intends to offend you, you may be sure of that. :)

Dear Igor,

thank for your kind reply. I was just a bit frustrated since I had sometimes the impression that sometimes people were assuming that I was asking silly questions (like why would I use that.. ). Even the search thing was not immiediate for me, since I expected codeguru to be implementing the page ranking algorithm as well or something similar. I then find frustrating when people posts links of things that are not exactly what you need or are things that if you try to implement them are not working. Even the msdn tutorials are not working sometimes, even following exactly step by step every part of the page. It seems to me that they have not tried to implement them themselve before posting that and is just a bit frustrating not being able to compile the things correctly. But of course, also this is part of the learning proces and everyone does its best.

I am under a lot of pressure and that's probably because I did not sounded patient. Will moderate mysefl more in the future.

Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pengCC

Why have u asked me this question? Is ACTIVE X an obsolete technology or do you assume that I will not understand the use of it?

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Take it easy. I asked you the question because I want to understand what you have in mind to use the technology for. Can you tell me that (so that I may suggest resources for you to use)?

Sorry Man! I was just frustrated.. those days are overhelming for me and I interpreted the message wrongly :-).

Basically I do not know.. I am just graduated and started a new job and I am responsable for the GUI of a new software. My Senior Collegue suggested me to use Active X controls but I do not know them. Even more we are using C++ and MFC, C++ is fine for me but MFC is completely new.

I have to implement a GUI based on the SDI and with two different FORM views (according to the type of user). We are going to deploy our application using CITRIX but one "super user" will be allowed to switch from the two views at runtime.

Here comes the ACTIVE X. I do not know what they are (never used them) but my collegue told me that we probably need ACTIVE X controls to create custom controls for inputting user data (like with custom boxes and labels if I undersand it correctly). I understand that ACTIVE X are used by MFC but since I am still in training for it I do not fully master them.

I have prepeared an exercise for my trainer that is coming in the next weeks and will include the following:

Tools:
- Visual Studio 2008 Professional
- Windows XP Professional
- MFC Feature Pack 1
- C++ and Visual C++ (MFC) as programming language

Topics Summary:
- Understand if it is possible to reuse existing project resources (e.g. copying a dialog from one project to another from the resource view)
- Understand if it is possible to add “visually” (using Visual Studio by editing the .rc file) a data grid or other non standard controls (such as projects found on CodeGuru)
- Understand the usage of Active X controls
- Similarly understand how to integrate an existing Active X control into the Visual Studio MFC toolbox
- How to create an active X control using MFC and integrate (see above) it in an MFC application
- How to create different CFormViews for the same document in an MFC SDI project
- Create dynamically new tabs in a tab control
- Save a view/document (project)
- Open a saved view/document (project)
- Send a saved project by e-mail
- Create a wizard dialog which is displayed before the main view window (CFormView) initialization and asks the user details on the type of window that he needs (selecting from the set of CFormViews defined in the program).

I assume I will have an awful lot to learn in the next period :-)

I'm not sure you need to use ActiveX controls. MFC is perfectly capable of creating custom controls.

ActiveX controls would be helpful if you are trying to create a plugable type of architecture where you can add external UI plugins to your app. From your description, it doesn't sound like you need this.

..thanks for that.. what if we need to do different GUI for different releases based on the same Document/Core?

My collegue was suggesting to use Active X to safe coding time by coding once the control and replugging it where we want in the the different versions..

our goal is to have 3 different views (with common parts) based on the same document.. would it make sense then to use Active X? Would you suggest a very very easy example or tutorial to create and integrate in Visual Studio a basic Active X?

Thanks a lot!

Unless your collegue already knows ActiveX and COM I would suggest someone new to MFC to stay away from a project that combines MFC and ActiveX.

The reason being is that it typically takes about 6 months to learn the basics of COM. Learning how to build a proper container that takes pluggable ActiveX components takes a bit longer.

...yep... despite one can be confident on his learning skills at the end of the day if you say that takes 6 months to learn, and you are a moderator of this website, it means that is likely to be harder than expected. I will keep learning MFC and I am sure that will be enough of a struggle to master and learn.

I am wondering, for future reference, are COM and ActiveX used in many project and with different languages?

Not sure about "many projects", but per my experience the intention to involve COM may be very and very different. In one of big commercial projects I lead, there are three COM out-of-proc servers accessed by PHP and C++ code, and one windowless ActiveX embedded in client front end. Another big WinCE project I participated in was comprised of several COM servers written and accessed in bare WinAPI/C++ only. The other VB 6.0 project used lots of COM servers, MS and third-party made. And one more project I lead is designed as C# front end with couple of in-proc COM servers used (windowless again :)). No surprise though, I do that as long as I have some experience in COM. And lots of other projects conducted by the company have not a trace of COM technology, been done for Linux and MacOS platforms.

By the way, COM has very little connection to MFC. Though I made a couple of ActiveXes in MFC just to train myself, I always prefer ATL to create ones. :D