Planning to use MFC 7?
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We are not using MFC at all here anymore What do you use then? WTL, plain old Win32 API or??? - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
We're writing a 3D app that will be cross platform, so I am actually writing a GUI library so that our Python console calls methods in classes I have created, the idea being we will rewrite those classes for each platform, and our Python interface will not need to change ( because it's what users will see and the idea is that something created for VB3 PC will work on VB3 Mac, obviously ). For that reason I suggested we dump MFC, because most of our code is using OpenGL anyhow, and I felt that while I am overall not unhappy with MFC as a layer over Win32, adding another layer made me worry about speed, and so I thought add a layer, dump a layer. I hoped to use WTL but everyone complained when I wrote the console in WTL that it slowed down the compile time. So we're using plain vanilla Win32 and I'm finally getting a lot of use out of my copy of Petzhold. I must say I'm really enjoying it as a learning experience, and I think it's helping me in terms of understanding what MFC has been managing behind the scenes for me. Actually I'm going away this weekend and it's to the wire if my MFC Internals book will arrive. I hope it does, so I've got something to do while my wife and her sister play tennis. This is the fifth weekend in a row where my wife has had stuff planned EVERY day. I hardly get a chance for a good block on the PC at night, I've been reading up on connection points for weeks and I'm yet to get a couple of hours to experiment and add them to my project. I'm getting really frustrated. Why did I get married again ??? Christian As I learn the innermost secrets of the around me, they reward me in many ways to keep quiet. Men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought Jewellery.
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I would like to know how many developers are planning on using MFC 7 (or are already using it)? Why, why not?
Yes, I will use MFC 7 on the occasions I need it. I will probably convert our legacy apps to it as well. Why? Numerous reasons. 1) I hate having to remember stuff about multiple environments. If I have to remember switch settings or quirks in VC6 that don't exist in VC7, i'll be annoyed. Yeah, maybe it'll be a little bit of work to convert stuff to VC7, but once done i'll be a lot happier. 2) MFC 7 is cleaner than MFC 6, has more error checking, and less bloated than MFC 6 (it doesn't include as much stuff during compiles and during execution). 3) MS is always more keen on fixing bugs in the current version than the previous version. If I find a bug, I have a much better chance of having it fixed in a VC7 service pack than a VC6 one. 4) I like the VC7 interface a lot. Of course I don't use MFC much these days, I either write in ATL/WTL or C#. But there are times when I need MFC.
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We're writing a 3D app that will be cross platform, so I am actually writing a GUI library so that our Python console calls methods in classes I have created, the idea being we will rewrite those classes for each platform, and our Python interface will not need to change ( because it's what users will see and the idea is that something created for VB3 PC will work on VB3 Mac, obviously ). For that reason I suggested we dump MFC, because most of our code is using OpenGL anyhow, and I felt that while I am overall not unhappy with MFC as a layer over Win32, adding another layer made me worry about speed, and so I thought add a layer, dump a layer. I hoped to use WTL but everyone complained when I wrote the console in WTL that it slowed down the compile time. So we're using plain vanilla Win32 and I'm finally getting a lot of use out of my copy of Petzhold. I must say I'm really enjoying it as a learning experience, and I think it's helping me in terms of understanding what MFC has been managing behind the scenes for me. Actually I'm going away this weekend and it's to the wire if my MFC Internals book will arrive. I hope it does, so I've got something to do while my wife and her sister play tennis. This is the fifth weekend in a row where my wife has had stuff planned EVERY day. I hardly get a chance for a good block on the PC at night, I've been reading up on connection points for weeks and I'm yet to get a couple of hours to experiment and add them to my project. I'm getting really frustrated. Why did I get married again ??? Christian As I learn the innermost secrets of the around me, they reward me in many ways to keep quiet. Men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought Jewellery.
Why did I get married again ??? I thought it would have been free and easy (?) access to baby making practice. :-D Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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Yes, when I need it :rolleyes: . I use MFC for 2 things: one is ISAPI extensions, and the second is GUI. Whenever I don't need these, I try to avoid MFC. I'm not a big fan of CString. I vote pro drink :beer:
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Why did I get married again ??? I thought it would have been free and easy (?) access to baby making practice. :-D Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
You'd have thought it would happen like that, wouldn't you ? Christian As I learn the innermost secrets of the around me, they reward me in many ways to keep quiet. Men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought Jewellery.
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I would like to know how many developers are planning on using MFC 7 (or are already using it)? Why, why not?
I've used it with VC 4 and 5 and wasn't very happy with it. But, I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to class frameworks. Borland's OWL in their v4.5 C++ compiler was a nice framework, but they had a hard time keeping up with Microsoft's changing API's. I've been using WTL lately and I'm warming up to it. I don't generally like the way that templates tend to obfuscate code. And I really don't like the macro-madness in MFC, but WTL seems like a reasonable compromise.
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You'd have thought it would happen like that, wouldn't you ? Christian As I learn the innermost secrets of the around me, they reward me in many ways to keep quiet. Men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought Jewellery.
Yes, but with 10 years marriage experience, I know the facts. ;P Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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CString has been rewritten and is now shared with ATL. cheers, Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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ATL Server is ISAPI just cleaned up. The resource files(HTML) in your ISAPI extensions are nolonger in the DLL. They are outside, modifyable without recompiling, and with a new extension. And the objects that exist are wrapped up much nicer now into class objects providing much of the features present in the ASP request and response objects. Thus making the over all development time much quicker and simpler. The only dependency is needing the new version of atl3.dll. Just my 2 cents, I can understand that current developments would not be feasible but future developments might benefit from it. Cheers, -Erik ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My thoughts are my own and reflect on no other.
Well, it's never just "a simple matter" of doing anything. You forget that it costs Microsoft *nothing* to say it's easy to do, but in "the real world" (you know, that place where all of the real programmers work), we have to regression test ALL of our code to make sure we (or Microsoft) didn't miss anything, or that we've considered all of the subtle side-effects related to "simply" changing over to a new way of doing things.
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Do we have to use COM to use a CString now? eh? ATL helps COM, but doesn't require it. It's just a template class CStringT (defined in /vc7/atlmfc/include/cstringt.h). It's typedef'd in afxstr.h as:
typedef ATL::CStringT< wchar_t, StrTraitMFC< wchar_t > > CStringW;
typedef ATL::CStringT< char, StrTraitMFC< char > > CStringA;
typedef ATL::CStringT< TCHAR, StrTraitMFC< TCHAR > > CString;cheers, Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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Well, it's never just "a simple matter" of doing anything. You forget that it costs Microsoft *nothing* to say it's easy to do, but in "the real world" (you know, that place where all of the real programmers work), we have to regression test ALL of our code to make sure we (or Microsoft) didn't miss anything, or that we've considered all of the subtle side-effects related to "simply" changing over to a new way of doing things.
...regression test... What's that? :laugh: Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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given the deteriorating quality of Microsoft's UIs these days You have to remember that Microsoft's new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by, even though you personally may not like it. It is a huge step forward for Microsoft in terms of accessibility, and I find it a hell of allot more responsive than most other UIs. David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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...regression test... What's that? :laugh: Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
isn't that testing under hypnosis? ;) --- "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots ... and the linux zealots still aren't being sterilized"
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new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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isn't that testing under hypnosis? ;) --- "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots ... and the linux zealots still aren't being sterilized"
So that's why I can't remember it. ;) Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
Office XP has a new look and feel that improves the user's Office experience. This includes removing visually competing elements, visually prioritizing items on a page, increasing letter spacing and word spacing for better readability, and defining foreground and background color to bring the most important elements to the front. There's no denying that the Office XP UI is a huge leap forward in terms of sheer ease of use. It really does indicate to you what you might want to do, but without asking "It looks like your writing a letter, I suggest you do this..." Apart from pretty much any company of individual that woks with disabled people - be that dyslexic, hard of sight, or something like downs syndrome – showing full out support (I work with these people, so I know that one for a fact) Source? You need to remember that amongst all the negative hype that follows any new Microsoft release (i.e.: “It’s the same as the last version, but with a different UI”), the “different UI” was not chosen by the programmers. Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. They may be greedy, but they are definitely not stupid. Believe it or not, research indicated that Clippy would be a good idea. Then people like you got hold of him… ;) P.S. I suggest you do your own little test… Set up a complex mail merge in both Word XP and Word 2000. Which one has the intuitive UI now? With XP you don’t even need to know what you are doing! David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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This is one of those claims that Microsoft has puled out of their ass. Man you are in one hell of a grumpy mood today! :) cheers, Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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Office XP has a new look and feel that improves the user's Office experience. This includes removing visually competing elements, visually prioritizing items on a page, increasing letter spacing and word spacing for better readability, and defining foreground and background color to bring the most important elements to the front. There's no denying that the Office XP UI is a huge leap forward in terms of sheer ease of use. It really does indicate to you what you might want to do, but without asking "It looks like your writing a letter, I suggest you do this..." Apart from pretty much any company of individual that woks with disabled people - be that dyslexic, hard of sight, or something like downs syndrome – showing full out support (I work with these people, so I know that one for a fact) Source? You need to remember that amongst all the negative hype that follows any new Microsoft release (i.e.: “It’s the same as the last version, but with a different UI”), the “different UI” was not chosen by the programmers. Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. They may be greedy, but they are definitely not stupid. Believe it or not, research indicated that Clippy would be a good idea. Then people like you got hold of him… ;) P.S. I suggest you do your own little test… Set up a complex mail merge in both Word XP and Word 2000. Which one has the intuitive UI now? With XP you don’t even need to know what you are doing! David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. I have serious reservations about MS's usability testing at times. The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible, and the usability tests I participated in at Symantec confirm this. To this day, I cannot understand how MS thought taking a clickable UI element and making it not look like a button was a good idea. Take a look at SystemWorks 2000. There's a toolbar at the top with MS-style flat buttons. Our users did not know they were buttons. In fact, the toolbar didn't even register in some users' minds. When we suggested they look at the toolbar, several people said something to the effect of, "Oh! I didn't see that" or "I didn't realize I could click there." In the 2001 version, we got rid of the flat buttons. I've not seen Office XP, but VS.NET's UI is even worse with those pseudo-3D menus and toolbars. It does my #2 pet peeve in UIs (#1 being missing affordances) and that is it's distracting. Sliding/fading menus fall into this same category. Can I just get a menu, please? Don't slide into view; I know the menu's going to come up because I just clicked it. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. I have serious reservations about MS's usability testing at times. The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible, and the usability tests I participated in at Symantec confirm this. To this day, I cannot understand how MS thought taking a clickable UI element and making it not look like a button was a good idea. Take a look at SystemWorks 2000. There's a toolbar at the top with MS-style flat buttons. Our users did not know they were buttons. In fact, the toolbar didn't even register in some users' minds. When we suggested they look at the toolbar, several people said something to the effect of, "Oh! I didn't see that" or "I didn't realize I could click there." In the 2001 version, we got rid of the flat buttons. I've not seen Office XP, but VS.NET's UI is even worse with those pseudo-3D menus and toolbars. It does my #2 pet peeve in UIs (#1 being missing affordances) and that is it's distracting. Sliding/fading menus fall into this same category. Can I just get a menu, please? Don't slide into view; I know the menu's going to come up because I just clicked it. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible I understand where you coming from, but I don't really see the issue. No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. This does not mean they have to have 3D borders... Can you imagine what this site would look like if everything you interacted with had thick 3D borders around it? It is obvious to me - and my mum, which says a lot for the guy at Symantec - that anything that looks like it can be clicked on is to be clicked on, and with the new Office XP UI it's even more obvious as they have used subtle colouring to draw attention to the controls you are most likely to use. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. The menu colouring in Office XP is deliberatly off-white as that makes it easier to read for the hard of vision, but being of near perfect corrected vision, I can't say it has any negative effect on me. The highlight shades of blue, the light grey and off-white colours, are all chosen as they are very distinc against each other. Just try a few of the system colour schemes and you will see that generally the resulting colours in XP are easier to distinguish that those of a traditional style. Okay, so that might not effect you, but if you are heard of seeing or have difficulty distinguising like hues, then this is a huge improvement. Accesibility is a major issue with software such as Office. The only UI elements that are non-beneficial to the end user (i.e. "eye candy") are the sliding/fading menus, but they are off by default anyway. Everything else seems to have benefits for the people we'd traditionally ignore. Why is it a bad thing that Microsoft aren't? David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
