VC++ MFC Extensions by Example

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I like it very much for it provide lots of examples and explain many questions about programming. So after I finished this book, I bought the other two books written by swanke.

Rating:
Summary: Most useful examples of any MFC book
Review: The great thing about this book is it addresses so many situations that MFC programmers find themselves in, and it seems like you're always trying to reinvent the wheel to deal with them.

We're currently wrapping up a 1 year project, and we had a lot of user interface issues that seemed minor, but required some investigation in how to deal with them. Just scanning through the table of contents, we found the solution to at least 4 of those issues, and we implemented them in a matter of minutes.

After greater examination of the book, we've discovered many ideas to incorporate in future releases of our software. Things we had considered, but seemed more difficult than they're going to be.

Swanke is a solid MFC coder who really understands the ins and outs of MFC. His examples don't take the bizarre hack routes that many programmers tend to use to implement things that are out of the ordinary. Instead, he uses MFC in very elegant ways that don't always seem obvious to the rest of us.

I applaud him on a very fine book. I also purchased his book, "Visual C++ MFC Programming by Example" and was equally impressed, and my review of it is available as well.

Rating:
Summary: An Essential Simplified MFC Solution Reference
Review: There are two MFC books real-world MFC programmers should keep as future references. VC++ MFC Extensions by Example by John Swanke is one of them. This is an essential MFC extension. Swanke presents powerful, yet surprisingly really simple fully implemented solutions to questions MFC programmers most often ask. For example, the author provides a solution to a folder selection dialog box. Swanke presents elegant solutions that are so simple, yet effective, they make Visual C++ Wizard seem overly complicated!

Swanke includes another element that definitely distinguishes this book from other MFC books: MFC virtual function execution sequences. Swanke does an exceptional job mapping the order of which Windows calls different virtual functions and presents fundamental pointers to important MFC messages. I believe the execution sequences Swanke presents help in design process, during implementation process, and ultimately during maintenance of MFC based applications. Lastly, his solutions are mixtures of MFC and Win32 API. Programmers learn to directly use Win32 API in an MFC architecture and get the best of both worlds.

I highly recommend VC++ MFC Extensions by Example.

Kuphryn

Rating:
Summary: An Essential Simplified MFC Solution Reference
Review: There are two MFC books real-world MFC programmers should keep as future references. VC++ MFC Extensions by Example by John Swanke is one of them. This is an essential MFC extension. Swanke presents powerful, yet surprisingly really simple fully implemented solutions to questions MFC programmers most often ask. For example, the author provides a solution to a folder selection dialog box. Swanke presents elegant solutions that are so simple, yet effective, they make Visual C++ Wizard seem overly complicated!

Swanke includes another element that definitely distinguishes this book from other MFC books: MFC virtual function execution sequences. Swanke does an exceptional job mapping the order of which Windows calls different virtual functions and presents fundamental pointers to important MFC messages. I believe the execution sequences Swanke presents help in design process, during implementation process, and ultimately during maintenance of MFC based applications. Lastly, his solutions are mixtures of MFC and Win32 API. Programmers learn to directly use Win32 API in an MFC architecture and get the best of both worlds.

I highly recommend VC++ MFC Extensions by Example.

Kuphryn

Rating:
Summary: An absolute MUST for any serious MFC/Visual C++ developers
Review: This book is an absolute MUST for any serious MFC/Visual C++ developer. It deals with complex and very practical subjects in a simple and straightforward manner! Before you waste hours and hours trying to develop one code snippet, simply consult the book and get it RIGHT the first time!

It does not matter if you are new to Visual C++ or a hardcore veteran - this book is full of very valuable information and shortcuts. Before I attempt something I have not done before, I consult the book first. Most of the examples are great for putting you on the right track and the code snippets can usually be inserted directly into your projects!

Rating:
Summary: A great collection of advanced MFC techniques
Review: This book was definitely worth it. It's a fat collection of semi-advanced MFC 'tricks', fully spelled out with working code. Some of the items are simple (creating a resizable dialog) and some are slick (putting an animation on a toolbar,) but they're all clearly spelled out. It's not a beginners' book.

You could call this book a collection of 'answers' - and if you have even one of these problems, it will pay for itself. But I found some of the techniques so useful I read it cover to cover, and then invented places to use them. It also includes a handy MFC reference card that's helped a half dozen times already.

The only downside is while the author has definately earned his pay, the publishing house hasn't. There are a number of glaring typographical errors, even wholly repeated sidebars. The cover stock is pretty cheap too. This book deserves to be re-issued from a respectable publisher.

Rating:
Summary: A great collection of advanced MFC techniques
Review: This book was definitely worth it. It's a fat collection of semi-advanced MFC 'tricks', fully spelled out with working code. Some of the items are simple (creating a resizable dialog) and some are slick (putting an animation on a toolbar,) but they're all clearly spelled out. It's not a beginners' book.

You could call this book a collection of 'answers' - and if you have even one of these problems, it will pay for itself. But I found some of the techniques so useful I read it cover to cover, and then invented places to use them. It also includes a handy MFC reference card that's helped a half dozen times already.

The only downside is while the author has definately earned his pay, the publishing house hasn't. There are a number of glaring typographical errors, even wholly repeated sidebars. The cover stock is pretty cheap too. This book deserves to be re-issued from a respectable publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Advanced Version of "Visual C++ Mfc Programming by Example"
Review: This is an advanced version of my other book, "Visual C++ Mfc Programming by Example". As I said with that book, I have found examples to be the best way to learn this subject. So I came up with a list of examples generic enough to apply to most applications and broad enough to cover most aspects of Mfc programming. Then I coded them up, documented them, even added an application that will add their code snippets to your current project. And the examples I found too advanced for the first book were left for this one, including: Adding a Button to a Window Caption, Capturing the Screen, Communicating with any Application Using Sockets, Dragging and Dropping Files into Your View, Using Hot Key Controls, Programmable Toolbars (Visual Studio style), Putting Icons in a Menu (Visual Studio style), Sharing Data with Another Application, Stretching a Bitmap,Tabbed Form Views,Using Serial I-O,Using Non-diffused Colors,Waiting For a Message,Putting Icons in the System Tray, Drawing to the MDI Client View, Context Sensitive Help,Bubble Help,Using RoboHELP(tm) to Create Help Files,Using a Dialog Box as a Control, Printing the View When it's a Common Control, Multitasking Within Your Application with Worker or User Interface Threads,Flashing a Window, Rebooting the System, Outputting a DIB Bitmap File, Binary Strings, Any Common Control as a View, Dynamically Changing Your Dialog Box Size, Directory Tree Control, Putting an Icon in the Status Bar, Adding Sounds to your Application, Starting Only One Instance of Your Application, Putting a Bitmap in the Main Window Title Bar, and as they say in commercial land, much , much more.