Microsoft Foundation Class Library

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Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) is an object-oriented C library for developing desktop applications for Windows.

MFC was introduced by Microsoft in 1992 and quickly used widely. Although Microsoft has introduced alternative application frameworks since then, MFC remains in widespread use.

Video Microsoft Foundation Class Library

History

MFC was introduced in 1992 with the Microsoft C/C 7.0 compiler for use with 16-bit versions of Windows as a very thin object-oriented C wrapper for Windows API. C just started to replace C for commercial application software development at the time. In the MFC program, direct Windows API calls are rarely required. Instead, the program creates objects from the Microsoft Foundation Class class and invokes a member function that belongs to that object. Many of these functions share their names with appropriate API functions.

One quirk of MFC is the use of "Afx" as the prefix for many functions, macros and the default precompiled header name "stdafx.h". During the initial development, what became MFC is called "Application Framework Extensions" and abbreviated "Afx". The name Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) was adopted too slowly in the release cycle to change this reference.

MFC 8.0 was released with Visual Studio 2005. MFC 9.0 was released with Visual Studio 2008. On April 7, 2008, Microsoft released an update to the MFC class as an out-of-band update to Visual Studio 2008 and MFC 9. The new user interface construction update feature, including ribbons and related UI widgets, fully customizable toolbars, docking panels that can be freely floated or docked to either side and document tabs.

MFC was originally a feature of the commercial version of Visual Studio. Thus, it is not included in freeware Visual C Express. The Visual Studio Community Edition, introduced in 2014, however, includes MFC.

The Windows Library Object (OWL), designed for use with Borland's Turbo C compilers, is a competing product introduced by Borland around the same time. Finally, Borland discontinued the development of OWL and licensed the distribution of MFC headers, libraries and DLLs from Microsoft for a short time, although it never offered fully integrated support for MFC. Borland then released the Visual Component Library to replace the OWL framework.

Maps Microsoft Foundation Class Library

Features

MFC is a library that wraps portions of the Windows API in class C, including functions that allow them to use the default app framework. Classes are defined for many managed-grip Windows objects and also for predefined windows and common controls.

At the time of introduction, MFC provided a C macro for Windows message handling (via Message Maps), exceptions, run-time type identification (RTTI), serialization and dynamic class instances. Macro for message handling aims to reduce memory consumption by avoiding the use of haphazard virtual tables and also to provide more concrete structures for various Visual C tools - provided for editing and manipulating code without parsing the full language. The message handling macro replaces the virtual function mechanism provided by C.

Macros for serialization, exceptions, and RTTI precede the availability of these features in Microsoft C by several years. The 32-bit version of MFC, for Windows NT 3.1 and newer Windows operating systems, uses compilers that implements language features and updates macros to encapsulate language features rather than providing customized adjustments, realizing upward compatibility.

The MFC ribbon resource editor allows developers to design ribbons graphically instead of using XML-based declarative markup like RibbonX API. Optionally, the ribbon component can be programmed directly by calling a series of new ribbon class methods. Developers can mix graphics and programmed ribbon development as it is convenient. The MFC application wizard has also been upgraded to support new features, including checkboxes to choose whether the app will use the ribbon or docking panel. New functionality is provided in the new class so the old app is still running. This update builds on BCGSoft's BCGControlBar Library Professional Edition. Microsoft has enforced additional license terms on ribbon users. This includes the requirement to comply with the UI Microsoft Design Guidelines, and an anti-competitive clause that prohibits the use of UIs in applications that compete with Microsoft Office.

MFC can be used by connecting static libraries or by adding MFC DLLs.

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Version

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See also

• Active Template Library (ATL)
• JUCE
• Qt
• Standard Template Library (STL)
• Windows Template Library (WTL)

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References

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Further reading

• Prosise, Jeff (1999). Windows Programming with MFC (2 ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN: 9781572316959.
• Shepherd, George (1996). MFC Internal (7 ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 9780201407211.
• Kruglinski, David (1997). Inside Visual C (4 ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN: 9781572315655.
• Microsoft (1995). Microsoft Visual C: Programming with MFC (2 ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN: 9781556159213.

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External links

• MFC MSDN Reference
• MFC: Visual Studio 2005 and Beyond
• Inside View In Next Generation Of Visual C (includes main update MFC 9)

Source of the article : Wikipedia