Customer Reviews

Programming Windows 95 with MFC: Create Programs for Windows Quickly with the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (Microsoft Programming Series)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent MFC beginner's book, and I still use it as a reference after 3 years of WIN32 MFC programming. Prosise writes clearly and he and/or his editors are good at organizing a book and creating a useful index. Furthermore, Prosise' code appears to all have been compiled and tested, unlike most of the book garbage out there.

This is a book for programmers seriously interested in learning to program for Windows 95/98 in MFC, not for people who don't even know how to run a C++ compiler or think programmers do any real work with the cheesy VC++ "wizards".

I would say that this is a "must have" MFC book for new MFC programmers, except that it is getting out of date. It doesn't have beans for coverage of the newer WIN32 common controls, anything on database programming (DAO/ADO), and basically doesn't cover MFC 4.2. For new purchasers, I would wait for the next edition, which was supposed to be out in the spring of 1998, (I have had it on back order for months). Many updates are greatly needed to cover programming for Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0. In particular, Document/View GUI applications of any serious complexity frequently involve a database, so the lack of any coverage of DAO is pretty limiting.

I can't say enough good things about this book. All examples are very clear and the explainations are nothing short of wonderful.

Another thing I like is that the applications are built from scratch, not using the Visual C++ app wizard. This is a much better way for the beginner to learn MFC.

This book is a must have...

Hmmmmmmmm, I've been puzzled by all those loving stories about this book . Well the good point(s) of this book are , that a lot of practically usefull topics are covered . Some of those even in some detail . But some of the more nasty features of the book , were that although Mr Prosise really made it an effort to copy petzold's style , he has unfortunately rarely succeeded .The example programs for instance are almost without exeption quite large , wich is annoying, if you just need a single feature .But the most frustrating thing is that many things are covered up to a certain level, which is really not that high. this leaves the reader guessing sometimes for vital further info about a certain feature, or quirk which you will undoubtebly encounter should U use code from the book pretty much as is . All in all , a nice introduction , but defintely not the final answer to you're windows hassles . and defintely not as good as the 'Petzold book ' .And not the book if you need to know the 'why' and the 'how' .

Reading previous reviews, there's not much left for me to add. Except that I have a library of over 200 programming books, and this one is still my favorite one!

I have read quite a few programming books and this one is certainly among the best. If you know C++, but don't know much about Windows programming, this is the book to buy. The writing is clear, the examples are useful, and the explanations are helpful.

i have seen a lot of books on this subject all of them begin with the appwizard tool as an instructor i cant use the appwizard as a teaching tool so i had a problem with that kind of book as i saw this book its was axactly what i was looking for. best for learning MFC and teaching it and in one word - Perfect

This is a nice introduction to MFC. I especially appreciated the way Prosise builds up to the Document/View Architecture and his coverage of threads. There are numerous examples to help clarify topics. However, many examples are too lengthy and repetitively used, making for a longer book than necessary. It primarily focuses on the GUI side of Windows coding, which is vital since MFC saves you from writing lots of dull windows maintenance code, but still leaves you thirsting for more lower level power. To compensate, I ordered Petzold's book "Windows 95 Programming" since direct windows API calls can be made from MFC. It does not cover database (CDatabase/CDaoDatabase) or networking (CAsyncSocket) capabilities which should have been included in its advanced section instead of Bitmaps,Palettes, and Regions. In all, I would recommend this book because it is well written and does "jump start" you into the world of MFC.

This book focuses solely on mfc and explains it in a very good way.The explanation style of the author is good. He starts with a detailed code and dissects it step-by-step giving the readers a good idea of the subject matter.I have several other books on visual C++ but most of them just skim the surface of MFC. I will recommend this book to beginners over other books on visual c++.Though I have not read Petzold's book on Programming windows95 ,this book can certainly be regarded as Petzold in MFC.

This is the most complete and detailed book about GUI side of the Windows programming using MFC. While working on my last project I used it approximately 85% of the time compared to the other books I have.

It's a good book to learn about MFC. However, the relation between MFC and wizards in Visual C++ is not clearly described. Also, I think (actually I'm sure) that there is a bug in the book.

In Chapter 13, there is a program called Wanderer. This nice program teaches us how to traverse the directories using MFC. However, the usage of the function "CloseHandle" in this program is wrong. The function "FindClose" should have been used instead.

Because I've trusted the code segment given in the book, I've lost a day in vain in trying to find a bug in "my" code.

I am sure that I am not the first one who found this bug. If the author is aware of this bug, I wonder why he didn't publish an errata in the web pages of mspress. This could save me (and I believe others) a lot of time.

Since the e-mail address of the author given in the book (72241.44@compuserve.com) is unreachable (the mailbox is full), I currently cannot contact the author about this bug. Anyway, it's a good book but beware of this bug.