The MFC Answer Book: Solutions for Effective Visual C++ Applications

by Eugene Kain

The MFC Answer Book: Solutions for Effective Visual C++ Applications is written for Windows developers who want to go beyond Wizard-supplied functionality and incorporate more sophisticated and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201185377
• ISBN13: 9780201185379
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 674 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 7.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great reference for stressed MFC programmer

This book is written in a question and answer format, just like a FAQ. Although the content predominantly revolves around documents and views, many other common questions are also answered. Personally, I love the format and the content. I hate having to weed through several huge books to find an answer to a simple question. I loaned out my previous copy, and it wasn't returned. I ended up buying another copy.While this book won't make you a guru, it just might save you an hour of frustration. Since I migrate between operating systems, APIs, and SDKs, I never put in the time to earn the title of MFC Guru, so this book comes in handy, especially when it comes to refreshing my memory, without having to plow through the MFC code. Unfortunately, this book is not all-inclusive, as many questions are left out. The "new" controls are left out entirely. However, even with the omissions, the book will give you a straight answer or point you in the right direction about 90% of the time. Highly recommended.

Excellent walkthrough

I have EVERY bible on MFC. professional mfc, windows withh mfc visual c++ inside but I found this book the most valuable. Instead of bombarding you with jargon and theorie this book can help you learn a lot better than others, for a great deal i do not care about mfc internals casue I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME to learn everything MFC is suppposed to be a library to USE not to completle dissect , sometimes you just have to accept certain things and work wiht them, I wont deny that I just copy and pase a lot from the examples..but even then its easy to see where you are heading and whats actually happening as the source is very good commented, the author even helped me wiht a serious problem.. you wwant somethign else than the usual boring looking mfc stuff..check this one out...

Ever wondered how to do this with MFC

Audience: Intermediate and above.Chapter 0 - Terminology and ConventionsChapter 1 - Document/View Architecture BackgrounderChapter 2 - Documents and Document Templates- Managing Document Templates- Managing Documents- Managing the Recent Files list (MRU)- Miscellaneous ItemsChapter 3 - Views and Frame Windows- General Topics- Opening and Closing Views and Frame Windows- Managing Sizes and Positions- Managing Caption, Icons, Cursors, and Backgrounds- Form Views- Splitter Windows- Switching Views- Miscellaneous ItemsChapter 4 - Dialog Boxes- General Topics- Managing Controls in a Dialog BoxChapter 5 - Property Sheet- General Topics- Managing Tabs- Embedding Property SheetsChapter 6 - Toolbars and Status Bars- Toolbars- Status Bars- General Control Bar TopicChapter 7 - MenusChapter 8 - Printing and Print PreviewAppendix A - Utility Functions and ClassesThis book is not about teaching MFC basics or fundamentals, it's all about hints and tricks that answers the question ... have you ever wondered how to do this in MFC? I sat down over the week-end for about several hours looking though the book and found it to be very helpful. It doesn't bog you down with large sample code, but it gives you snippets of code that just goes straight to the point.. Be aware this book is not for beginners, but you don't have to be an expert on MFC to understand this book either. This is definitely a keeper for me and I suspect that some time in the future will come in handy as a good reference book.

Should be in every MFC programmer's library

I now own four Visual C++ books, and after a year or so of programming with MFC, this is often the book I turn to first. When you've used MFC for a while, you realize that if your application fits exactly into the mold forseen by the MFC programmers, your job is a snap. But I've never had an application quite like that. There is always something that has to be different from the straight-and-narrow path. This book is the first line of defence for how to deal with those tweaks.Many of the questions that this book answers cannot be answered by reading Microsoft's documentation (this is not particularly a slam at Microsoft: the system is just too huge to document everything to the last detail), and the only real way to answer them is to read the source code for MFC. Luckily for us, Eugene Kain has done this. A great feature of the book is that he gives both cookbook recipes to achieve a required tweak, AND an explanation of the relevant source code, so that you gain an understanding of how you might do something similar-but-not-quite-the-same.My only complaint is that I want volume II, volume III, ...!I recommend this book to all the (Unix background) programmers in my center that are starting to use Visual C++.

One of the best, a must read for serious developers.

The "MFC Answer Book" is an excellent book that explainshow to implement advanced features that you find in many Windowsapplications. The author does not just give you code to implement the features, but clearly explains why and how the code works. Most importantly, he explains many important concepts of the MFC application framework. For example, he gives an excellent explanation of the Document/View architecture. Within this discussion, he explains how to code a variety of different user-interfaces that take advantage of the Document/View architecture. There is also a section that explains how to use frames within your application in detail. When explaining an advanced concept, the author shows how it relates to the MFC architecture by highlighting and explaining important code fragments from the MFC implementation. This book doesn't waste much time explaining how to use tools like the ClassWizard or Application Wizard. These are topics covered in less advanced books. This book concentrates on what is important, and helps you understand the code that these tools generate. After becoming very proficient in programming Windows using Visual Basic, I wanted to learn Windows programming using C++ and MFC since it is a more expressive language. I have read about 5 books on MFC programming from cover to cover. Out of the books I have read, I have found this to be one of the best. If you are new at Windows programming using C++ and MFC, I would suggest reading a more basic book first. A less advanced book will teach you the topics you need to understand some of more advanced topics discussed in this book. Out of all the books I have read, I have found this book to be the best organized. Each topic is just a couple pages long which makes for nice reading. Also, each section comes with source code examples that demonstrate the topic being discussed. I found that all the code examples worked and the book was very accurately written. In summary, this is an excellent book to purchase when you want to learn the behavior of the MFC architecture that makes your programs run. It also explains how to implement many neat features that you find in many Windows applications.