MSDN Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 86)

GUI LIbrary Bring The Simplicity Of Windows Forms To Native Apps John Torjo The problem with GUI programming in C++ is that most libraries are too low level, putting too much of the burden on the programmer. They rely on C-like structs, or their wrapper classes don’t hide enough complexity. Also, they don’t make event programming simple enough, instead forcing you to have to know about underlying WM_ messages. In this article, I will show you eGUI++, a C++ library I have written that gives you, the client programmer, a high-level interface for dealing with GUI applications. It hides complexity, making event programming quite simple by completely hiding knowledge of WM_ messages. You won’t need to deal with any C-like raw structure; you always deal with classes. All in all, eGUI++ client code is simple to read and simple to write. eGUI++ is Windows®-only. I don’t truly believe in cross-platThis article discusses: • The problem with GUI programming • Creating window objects • Handling events and notifications • Forms and controls form GUI applications, unless such an application is either trivial, a simple testing framework, a prototype, or just educational. More importantly, I strongly believe in taking advantage of all the underlying OS is offering. And for Windows XP and Windows Vista® that’s quite a bit. It’s Native and Portable Technologies discussed: Win32 aPI, C++ 86 msdn magazine For those looking for CLR code, you already have managed C++. That is a good platform, so there’s no need to improve there. For the rest of you craving a good library to generate native Windows code for Windows 2000 and newer operating systems, keep on reading. You’ll love the result; the lib is straightforward to use, taking advantage of the OS you’re targeting. And you won’t need the Microsoft® .NET Framework at all. The code you’ll write will feel like C++. Additionally, the code you’ll write is not Visual C++ compiler-specific. You can compile it with g++ (GNU C++ Compiler) 4.1 if you wish. Basically, if you wrap the Win32® API, there’s nothing preventing you from writing portable code. That said, for a non-trivial GUI, you’ll need a good IDE such as Visual Studio® 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 Express editions. I’ve tweaked my library to be integrated with Visual Studio 2005 Express and newer and to give you an even better GUI experience. What I really focused on is code completion to make sure that when you create a new GUI class or extend an existing one, the IDE will do its best to help.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - June 2008

MSDN Magazine - June 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Cutting Edge Patterns In Practice SAAS Concurrency Robotics Form Filler GUI Library Service Station Foundations Windows With C++ Concurrent Affairs Going Places { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - June 2008

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