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Microsoft Foundation Class Library

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The Microsoft Foundation Class Library (also Microsoft Foundation Classes or MFC) is a library that wraps portions of the Windows API in C++ classes, including functionality that enables them to use a default application framework. Classes are defined for many of the handle-managed Windows objects and also for predefined windows and common controls.

1 History
2 Features
3 MFCNext
4 Versions
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
- 8.1 Official sites
- 8.2 Tips

History

MFC was introduced in 1992 with Microsoft's C/C++ 7.0 compiler for use with 16-bit versions of Windows. C++ was just beginning to replace C for development of commercial application software and C/C++ 7.0 was the first of Microsoft's compilers to add C++ support. One interesting quirk of MFC is the use of "Afx" as the prefix for many functions, macros and the standard pre-compiled header name "stdafx.h". During early development what became MFC was called "Application Framework Extensions" and abbreviated "AFX". The name Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) was adopted too late in the release cycle to change these references.^[1] MFC 8.0 was released with Visual Studio 2005. MFC is not included in the free edition of Visual C++ 2005 Express. The Object Windows Library (OWL), designed for use with Borland's Turbo C++ compiler, was a competing product introduced by Borland around the same time. Eventually, Borland discontinued OWL development and licensed the distribution of the MFC headers, libraries and DLLs from Microsoft^[2] for a short time, though it never offered fully integrated support for MFC. Borland later released VCL (Visual Component Library) to replace the OWL framework. Microsoft's emphasis on MFC has been reduced in favor of their .NET Framework. MFC 8 gained support for bridging elements of MFC with the .NET Framework to aid developers in migrating to the new API. A 'leaner, meaner' alternative to MFC is the Windows Template Library (WTL). The free Visual C++ Express version compiles WTL applications, but does not include the IDE support of the standard, professional and Team editions.^[3]

Features

When MFC was introduced, Microsoft extended the C++ syntax with a series of macros for management of Windows messages (via Message Maps), exceptions, run time type identification, and dynamic class instantiation (many of these features – exceptions or run time type identification, for example – were not built into Microsoft's compiler at the time, but would appear in future versions). The macros for Windows messages were intended to reduce memory required by avoiding gratuitous Virtual table use and provide a more concrete structure for various Visual C++-supplied tools to edit and manipulate code without parsing the full language. The message-handling macros replaced the virtual function mechanism provided by C++. The macros which implemented serialization, exception support, and dynamic runtime types predated availability of standards-based language extensions by a number of years. 32-bit versions of MFC, for Windows NT 3.1 and later Windows operating systems, used compilers that implemented the language features and updated the macros to simply wrap the language features instead of providing customized implementations, realizing upward compatibility.

MFCNext

Microsoft is developing an update to the MFC classes that will be made available as an out-of-band update to Visual Studio 2008 and MFC 9 during the first half of 2008.^[4] It will feature new user interface constructs, including the Ribbon user interface of Microsoft Office 2007 and associated UI widgets, fully customizable toolbars, docking panes like Visual Studio 2005 (which can either be freely floated or docked to any side) and document tabs.^[5] However, the Ribbon elements needs to be created in code; it does not support the XML-based declarative markup like the RibbonX API in Microsoft Office 2007 does. The MFC application wizard has also been upgraded to support the new features - including a check-box to select whether the application will use the Ribbon or the Visual Studio 2005 user interface elements. The new functionality is provided in new classes so that old applications still continue to run.^[5] This update is building on top of BCGSoft’s BCGControlBar Library Professional Edition^[6].

Versions

Product version	MFC version
Microsoft C/C++ 7.0	MFC 1.0
Visual C++ 1.0	MFC 2.0
Visual C++ 1.5	MFC 2.5
Visual C++ 2.0	MFC 3.0
Visual C++ 2.1	MFC 3.1
Visual C++ 2.2	MFC 3.2
Visual C++ 4.0	MFC 4.0 (mfc40.dll included with Windows 95)
Visual C++ 4.1	MFC 4.1
Visual C++ 4.2	MFC 4.2 (mfc42.dll included with Windows 98-First Edition)
eMbedded Visual C++ 3.0	MFC 4.2 (mfc42.dll)
Visual C++ 5.0	MFC 4.21 (mfc42.dll)
Visual C++ 6.0	MFC 6.0 (mfc42.dll)
eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0
Visual C++ .NET 2002	MFC 7.0 (mfc70.dll)
Visual C++ .NET 2003	MFC 7.1 (mfc71.dll)
Visual C++ 2005¹	MFC 8.0 (mfc80.dll)
Visual C++ 2008¹	MFC 9.0 (mfc90.dll)