2.2 Internet

2.2. Internet

Throw on some sunglasses, put the top down and take a cruise on that big ole' information highway. There's tons of great MFC information at your finger tips (sorry billg), if you know where to look…..

2.2.1. World Wide Web Pages

Instead of having to manage a bunch of fluctuating URLs in the FAQ this is just a start-off point. Check out the Stingray "For Developer's Only" and the Foundation Software pages for really good pages that are always up-to-date.

Here are some URLs with MFC, or MFC related information:

MFC/MSVC Specific_____________________________________________________________________

http://www.microsoft.com - Microsoft's WWW.
http://www.microsoft.com/visualc - Visual C++ MotherShip for information - check this weekly if you want to be really hip (or a BIG VC++ NERD depending on your perspective <g>).
http://www.stingray.com/dev/dev.htm - For MFC Developer's ONLY!!
http://www.webcom.com/~sleslie/resources.html - Great page by Scott Leslie of VC++/MFC resources on the web.
http://www.stingray.com - MFC extensions company, Stingray Software
http://www.visionx.com/mfcpro - The MFC Professional - a site that has some useful MFC information, not updated very frequently though.
http://www.vcdj.com - Visual C++ Developer's Journal.

Lots of magazines are on the web, see section 2.4.1 for those URLs

2.2.2. Mailing lists

The MFC mailing list was originally started by David Elliott and now it has been picked up by none other than Microsoft (Big Brother is listening!). But seriously, it is really great that Microsoft decided to keep this source of peer-level support alive. Oh MFC mailing list, why do I love you? Let me count the ways:

Very low noise.
Sometimes Mike yells at people and it makes me laugh uncontrollably.
It's moderated so someone else has to deal with all of the bounces, weirdos, flames, spams, etc..
It's an advanced group - there are no: "What is CObject!?" kind of questions - or at least they are few and far between.
Want to learn MFC? Spend two weeks reading this and see if you can answer every question. Don't stop until you can. You now know MFC better than the top 2% of programmers.

Interested? Instructions on joining are at:

http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/essentials/mail.asp (you may have to have IE to view this, don't know).

There is a nice archive at http://microsoft.ease.lsoft.com/archives/index.html

If you want to have some fun, ask if you should call TerminateThread()!

2.2.3. Usenet Newsgroups

You can get to Usenet groups through the Internet, or through many of the on-line services these days. Here's a quick rundown of newsgroups that have MFC-specific content or similar things of interest:

comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools.mfc - A MFC-only newsgroup - and it's a good one. This is relatively new in the Netnews Universe, so you may have to get an administrator to add it at your news site. It's available on MSN, AOL and CIS.
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools - This is where most of the MFC stuff USED to happen, nothing but noise now. You want to check out the .mfc group first.
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc - Give it a shot, lots of noise here, but usually good noise.
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 - I like this group, doesn't seem too crowded, people know what's going on, I guess because they're really into win32.
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.ole - An occasional thread about some of the OLE classes pops up here.
comp.lang.c++ - This is suppose to be for C++ language issues, but people are always posting about MSVC and MFC here. This group is really frustrating to read, I recommend staying away. There's about a 100000:1 noise ratio in here.

Microsoft has ditched their Compu$erve forums (Yeah!) and now they sponsor "peer support" via a news server at news://msnews.microsoft.com . Point your news reader there and then navigate to the microsoft.public.vc.mfc. There is a whole hierarchy under VC you may want to explore, but this one is the most active and interesting in my opinion. If you are having problems getting onto this, try this URL:

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.vc.mfc if that doesn't work, try a different email reader, but please don't email us, we are not in the business of helping people read newsgroups -sorry.

2.2.4. Other FAQs of interest

Windows FAQ - Maintained by Tom Haapanen.

ftp.metrics.com:~/faq
: Explains lots of great stuff about Windows that you won't find here.

Windows Programming FAQ - Maintained by Tom Haapanen.

ftp.metrics.com:~/faq
: Awesome Windows Programming FAQ. I think it's been resurrected by a new fellow under Tom's watchful eye. Keep an ear to the newsgroups for the details.

C++ FAQ - Maintained by Marshall Cline.

ftp to rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/comp.lang.c++, also on comp.lang.c++
: This is an awesome FAQ, answers every C++ question you'd ever conceive of. It's not specific to MSVC so be careful, some behavior could be different.These guys have a book out on it.

WinHelp FAQ - Maintained by Pete Davis

Posted regularly to comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.winhelp If you have a question about the Windows help system, this is for you.

Windows NT FAQ - Maintained by Adam Hamilton

Posted to comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc? Pretty good, lots of networking stuff in there.

2.2.5. FTP sites

There's not much MFC code out there. You can check out these sites:

ftp.microsoft.com - Has all the knowledge databases and a couple of MFC specific things. Check out the software library too (softlib).
ftp.cica.indiana.edu - pub/pc/win3/progrmr
wuarchive.wustl.edu - Good site, don't know about MFC stuff.pub/win3/progrmmr
ftp.uu.net - /vendors/microsoft has some developer support things that are on both ftp.microsoft.com and CompuServe. Microsoft seems to be moving away from here.
oak.oakland.edu - (SimTel Mirror) SimTel/win3/pgmtools

If you don't have Internet access, you can order CD-ROMs with these entire archives from Walnut Creek. Call (800) 786-9907 or (510)947-5996 for more information.

2.2.6. The MFC FAQ FTP Archive!

We've started a MFC FAQ FTP archive. This archive contains MFC samples that illustrate FAQs.

ftp://ftp.stingray.com/pub/stingray/mfc_faq

To submit a sample, upload it into the mfc_faq/incoming directory and send and email to scot@stingray.com explaining the submission.

Currently the MFC FAQ FTP Archive contains:

multdocs.zip - Shows how to have multiple CDocuments.
multview.zip - Shows how to have multiple views.
onetime.zip - How to restrict your application to one instance.
dlgcbr.zip - How to put controlbars in your dialogs.

%%TODO - Update these samples for 5.0 -someone? anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? These were lost when the landru.unx.com account disappeared, anyone have them?