A definitive book for developers who want to understand and profit from the advances inherent in C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library, this book explores the basics and, for the first time, gives authoritative coverage of OLE and ActiveX.

Average Customer Review: ( 81 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

However, if you are new to Visual C++ or have never heard of MFC, this is not the book I would recommend. I would suggest picking up Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 6 instead. Real beginners need a book that tells them how to use the IDE, debug programs, and use the wizards. So what if after reading it, all that wizard generated code becomes a blur to you. That's what Prosise and other more advanced books are for.

I'm an experienced C++ developer and I had read two MFC books (Beginning Visual C++ 6, MFC Programming by Alan Feuer) and Petzold 5th ed before reading Prosise and I still found it a little difficult reading, mostly because it starts off kind of slow (as someone else mentioned too). The chapter I found most difficult was the one on OLE clipboard/drag & drop.

I really recommend reading Petzold 5th ed before reading this or any other intermediate/advanced MFC book. Petzold is more of a beginner's book for Win32 SDK-style GUI programming.

46 of 47 found the following review helpful:

Starts slow and low, ends high and fly.Aug 11, 1999
By D. Crandall "bippi"
This is the best MFC book ever. Conversational style, and authoritative reference. He puts logic into the nonsensical, and starts slow (no appwizard shtuff and confusion until chapter 4) so everyone can understand. In chapter 4, he slowly walks you through your first simple program involving Visual C++ 6.0's mfc appwizard. This book was made for those who have no clue about the MFC tutorials (95% of those who use Visual C 6.0) in the MSDN library, but yet want to understand MFC someday.

However, know your inheritance of classes in C++ before reading. Reading Programming Windows 5th Edition by Charles Petzold before this isn't a bad idea either, but it isn't required, it just makes a much greater appreciation of MFC. MFC still doesn't stand totally on it's own without the win32 API either, but it comes pretty close. The last word of warning is that it is geared to the Visual C 6.0 compiler. So for those with Insprise, you aren't out of luck (it facilitates understanding 1000% still), just some of the stuff about using appwizards (which, come in handy) isn't going to apply to you. Prosise makes compensation for those with other compilers.

At the end, he goes into a pretty good COM ActiveX, and OLE tutorial (and how they apply to MFC) but nothing huge (a mere 220 pages).

52 of 56 found the following review helpful:

Comprehensive but OverratedMay 26, 2000

This book covers MFC in great detail. That can be a plus or a minus, depending on how you look at it. If you're a beginner, I would not recommend this book. Interestingly enough, in the book's introduction, the author writes: "[This book] was written with two kinds of people in mind: (1) Windows API programmers who want to learn MFC; (2) Programmers who have never before programmed Windows." I strongly disagree with (2). If you want to spend hours and hours reading this book at a snail's space, and then going back and continually reviewing what you read, then I guess it's possible for you as a beginner to learn MFC from this book. For the majority of beginners, however, starting out with this book would not be the best way to learn MFC. (Of course, the author's job is to sell copies of his book, so why wouldn't he claim that it's for beginners too?)

The best part about this book is its comprehensiveness. So, if you're looking for a good reference, this book definitely gets a thumbs-up. But if you want clear discussions of fundamental MFC concepts, this book falls short. When you read this book, in many ways you can't see the forest for all the trees. That is, Prosise does a rather poor job of separating key, high-level concepts from more advanced, low-level details. The result is a book that is very dense and not so readable.

Even when he isn't getting bogged down in details, Prosise doesn't always present topics effectively. At some places his discussions are pretty good, but at others they aren't so clear. Frankly, although Prosise is a brilliant programmer, I don't think he's that gifted as a teacher. He no doubt understands the material himself, but he isn't nearly as skilled at presenting it to someone with little exposure to it.

If you're an intermediate MFC programmer--or, even better, an advanced one--this book can be a valuable resource. But if you're trying to navigate the waters of MFC/COM for the first time, try another book--and come back to this one after you've already learned the ropes.

21 of 21 found the following review helpful:

great book from beginner to intermediate usersJun 13, 2000
By bookmark
When I started to learn MFC, I bought many books. Well, after I read all of them, I can create application myself without understanding the concept of MFC. Most of other MFC books just tell you to insert this and that to the .cpp and .h files without even mention what those lines mean. But this book is really fantastic in explaining all the codes in MFC, from the auto included codes done by visual C++ to all the codes that the book tells you to insert.
Besdies, the examples of this book are very illustrative. Though the examples are more complicated than other MFC books, the author explains them really well, and from the example, you will actually catch the concept of MFC programming.
One little flaw about this book is that it's not written as a reference book. it's more like a tutorial to someone who's new or intermediate to MFC but have some knowledge on C++. Thus, after 1 or 2 years in MFC, you might want to look for another MFC reference book.

19 of 20 found the following review helpful:

Good Reference Book but not good for beginnersFeb 14, 2002

The is no doubt that this is a must read book for the MFC programmer. As a reference book, it is excellent, but for the beginning MFC programmer, this book falls short as a tutorial.

My biggest complaint with the book is this:

Prosise repeatly states that learning MFC using wizards is a bad idea, and stresses the importance of learning to code MFC by hand. I couldn't agree more. In fact, I bought his book so that I could learn MFC without relying on code generators.

However, Prosise's "let's not use 'wizards'" attitude lasts only until chapter 4 - at which point, it's wizards all the way.

Why is it so difficult to find a MFC book that doesn't use wizards? These wizards generate code that is extremely obscure.
Even the simplest code that these wizards generate, requires an understanding of documents and views, a fairly complex subject in itself.

I just resently bought Herbert Schildt's "MFC programming from the ground up". This book seems to be the only truely wizard free MFC programming book on the market. The examples are hand coded and start forward. The beginner programmer would probably be better off, reading Schildt before going to Prosise.

I'm starting to believe that part off the reason MFC is so difficult is that all the tutorials drown the reader in wizard generated code. It should not take a brain surgeon to get a dialog box up and running.

See all 81 customer reviews on Amazon.com