While many of us have switched to C# and VB.NET, MFC does still have a life. Microsoft has made available a beta of the next major MFC release.
Many of us have moved to newer languages such as C#, leaving behind our days of mastering templates and references and other oddities in C++. And so this might come as a surprise to some of you: Microsoft is getting ready to release a major update to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC).
Updates to the library include many enhancements that allow your applications to have the look and feel of the latest Office 2007 user interfaces (including the Office Ribbon). Additionally, you can give your application docking toolbars and panes for the look of Visual Studio.
The release also includes template library enhancements that conform with the TR1 draft standard. (TR1 is a draft standard that updates the C++ standard library. This standard, once approved, will make its way into the next major C++ language standard. Many of the TR1 templates are based on those found in the popular Boost C++ library.)
Microsoft lists the following as included in the TR1 standard:
- Regular expression parsing
- Containers (tuple, array, unordered set, and others)
- Random number generators
- Polymorphic function wrappers
- Type traits
- Smart pointers
More information is available here.
