Using the Classes to Write Applications for Windows

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Taken together, the classes in the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) make up an "application framework" — the framework on which you build an application for Windows. At a very general level, the framework defines the skeleton of an application and supplies standard user-interface implementations that can be placed onto the skeleton. Your job as programmer is to fill in the rest of the skeleton — those things that are specific to your application. You can get a head start by using AppWizard to create the files for a very thorough starter application. You use the Microsoft Visual C++ resource editors to design your user-interface elements visually, ClassWizard to connect those elements to code, and the class library to implement your application-specific logic.

Version 3.0 and later of the MFC framework supports 32-bit programming for Win32 platforms, including Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows NT version 3.51 and later. MFC Win32 support includes multithreading. Use version 1.5x if you need to do 16-bit programming.

This family of articles presents a broad overview of the application framework. It also explores the major objects that make up your application and how they are created. Among the topics covered in these articles are the following:

Other parts of the framework story include:

For a step-by-step tutorial in which you build an application with the framework, read the Scribble Tutorial.

For a general guide to MFC documentation, see the topic MFC: Overview.