Early in August, I blogged about our early thinking on Visual C++ post Orcas. The C++ team and I got a huge amount of great feedback on this. Thanks for the same.
The team is looking at the feedback and finalizing plans for where we should be focusing to move Visual C++ forward. One of the first areas you will see us invest is in native libraries. The team is working on a significant update to the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). We will be delivering this as an update to Visual Studio 2008 in the first half of 2008. We will have a preview of the same sometime around the early part of the new year.
Using this update to MFC, developers will be able to create applications with the “look and feel” of Microsoft’s Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio. Some of the specific features include Office 2007 Ribbon bar look, Internet Explorer look with rebars and task panes, Visual Studio look with sophisticated docking functionality, auto hide windows, property grids and the like. You can also enable your users to customize your application through live drag and drop of menu items and toolbar buttons.
In addition, we will also be delivering TR1 support. TR1 is the first major addition to the standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as smart pointers, regular expression parsing, new containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc.), sophisticated random number generators, polymorphic function wrappers, type traits and more.
Stay tuned for an early preview of this in the beginning of the new year. Meanwhile, you can check out the C++ team blog for more information. You should also check out our Channel 9 video on the new MFC libraries at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=355087.
Namaste!
As an update to Visual Studio 2008, we’re pleased to announce a major new release of the Microsoft Foundation
Ayman Shoukury has announced an update to Visual Studio 2008 that is a new release of the Microsoft Foundation
Hi Soma,
Will there be Office 2007 look and feel controls as an update to VS2008 at the same timeframe?
This is one area where Microsoft could have added these controls as part of VS2008.
Thanks,
Raman
Hi Raman,
Yes, all of the Office 2007 look and feel controls are part of the MFCNext + TR1 package, so they will ship as an update to VS 2008 - preview at the beginning of the year and the final release in the first half of next year.
VS 2008 has support for some Vista UI controls out of the box.
-somasegar
Having cut my teeth on MFC programming prior to coming to Microsoft, it is nostalgic and surprising that
Thanks. What about non-MFC developers using VB.NET and C#? Will there be Office 2007 look and feel Windows Forms or WPF controls out of the box? I am using a thirdy-party Office 2007 style controls, but the quality of controls coming out of Microsoft is different from vendors. I can see the difference when my app runs on XP and Vista, the refresh is horrible using third-party controls. One other control that developers are probably looking for their apps is the hierarchical datagrid.
Thank you for updating MFC. I still find it the best tool for writing consumer commercial desktop applications.
I don't like the ribbon interface. However, many of the controls demonstrated in the Channel 9 video would be very useful in other places. Hopefully many will be available without the ribbon.
Will you finally add the super grid control used by Outlook in the contacts phone list? (The properties grid is one step, but still too narrowly defined.)
I've also needed an outlook navigation pane. (Yeah, CodeJock provides this, but I don't always need all the other baggage with CodeJock. Then there's the classic persuading the boss to make the buy problem.)
Encapsulating GDI+ would be helpful. Like too many things Microsoft, GDI+ can get over complicated when encoding/decoding and loading files from resources. The difference is starkly illustrated by comparing LeadTools with GDI+. Only problem is that LeadTools is a) expensive and b) massively bloated.)
Could you also refine interdependencies so statically linked MFC apps are smaller. (There was a big jump in size a few years back.)
One last thing. Sounds trivial, but could you fix the wizards to create correctly formatted code? Could you also fix the bug which inserts an MFC header into the .h file when you use the class wizard?
Thank you Soma! I was anxiously waiting for the day when .NET buzz would slow down and people would realize .NET is not the answer for everything. :-)
Raman, we are planning on providing similar controls for WPF but we don't yet have a definitive list or a date we can announce yet, sorry.
As soon as we have something we can talk about publically we'll definitely blog about it so please do keep reading!
Ian
(General Manager for WPF)
As usual, I am assuming the source code for the Ribbon Bars etc. will be available just as usual with MFC bundled with Visual Studio product, right?
Finally some really good news!
After all that managed code overdose, I missed something really native, really usefull for real-world development.
I only wonder why you didn't that earlier...
Will you deliver? or you are just baiting us for VS08?
Anyhow we will still wait the VC++ team to deliver even if MS will not :)
it will give you a hobby also :P
Any plans on WTL? I always thought its way of doing things far better than MFC's, and with your new compiler closer to the standard(s) that shouldn't be a problem ehh? - besides are not templates the furure of libraries?
WOW !! What a surprise !
It is so GREAT !
I was just wondering if VS2008 would bring something new for an old-fashioned programmer like me ;)
I'm using MFC for 15 years. I still had not found any good alternative to C++/MFC, even for developping retail software (ie I don't think C++ is reserved for device drivers or games)
IMHO, for fast & "not-fat" software, the only choice is C++/MFC (Winform is fine for developping a shareware or a "fatware", WPF is really good looking but needs 16Mb RAM and is slower than Java... OK.. maybe I'm kidding a little)
Oh ! I've renewed my Codejock.com licence a few days ago... Wondering what these guys will do...
Again, THANKS ! That's a really really good decision (IMHO, of course)
Eerrrr... do you need beta tester ? ;)