Introduction to Windows Programming

1. Introduction to Windows Programming Jim Fawcett CSE 681 – Software Modeling and Analysis Fall 2005

2. References • Developing Professional Applications for Windows 95 and NT Using MFC, Marshall Brain and Lance Lovett, Prentice Hall, 1997. • Now out of print, but some copies still available on-line. • Practical Visual C++ 6, Jon Bates and Tim Tompkins, Que, 1999. • Currently available through Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com. • Programming Windows with MFC, Jeff Prosise, Microsoft Press, 1999. • This is a large, effective book, used in CSE 778 – Advanced Windows Programming, but overkill for this course. • Windows Forms Programming in C#, Chris Sells, Addison-Wesley, 2004 • Comprehensive and very well written.

4. The Simplest Classical Windows Program • Output from the MINWIN program is shown on the next slide. The program: • Creates a frame window • Paints a fixed text message in the window • Reacts to left mouse button clicks by creating a MessageBox • You will the program code, minwin.cpp, and project workspace, minwin.dsw in the folder MINWIN.www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/code/basicWindows/Minwin

8. The Simplest MFC based Program • Output from the MFCWIN program is shown on the next slide. The program: • Creates a frame window • Paints a fixed text message in the window • Reacts to left mouse button clicks by creating a MessageBox • You will the program code, mfcwin.cpp, and project workspace, mfcwin.dsw in the folder MINWIN.www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/code/basicWindows/MfcWin

10. Dialog Based Applications • A dialog is an opaque window, called a form, on which are embedded a collection of smaller windows called controls. • The main dialog form is wrapped in a dialog class, derived from MFC’s CDialog class. • Each control is a window with a self contained set of functionality that dialog designers use “as-is”, or modify in limited ways. • Controls are placed on the dialog form by dragging from a palette in the dialog resource editor. • Controls are hooked into the application processing by providing message handlers in the main dialog class that access the controls using CDialog::GetDlgItem(…) and CDialog::SetDlgItem(…) member functions.

12. Structure of MFC Dialog based Application

13. Frame Window Applications • A frame window application consists of a window that supports a large client area in which text and graphics are displayed, embedded in a frame that supports menus and perhaps some controls. • All text and drawing in the client area are supported by the Graphics Device Interface Object (CGDIObject) and Device Context (CDC) classes. • Most frame window applications use the Single Document Interface (SDI) or Multiple Document Interface (MDI) architectures. These follow document/view architecture structure: • Documents provide all the support for managing the program’s data, including reading and writing from persistent storage. • Views provide all the support for displaying one or more views of the data and most user interactions with the program.

17. WinForms • WinForms were introduced with .Net and are very similar to Visual Basic RAD Forms in Visual Studio, version 6.0. • Forms are used for both Frame Window and Dialog Applications. • You get a dialog application by pulling lot’s of controls onto a form and setting the Form properties to have dialog behavior. • You get a Frame Window by painting the Form your self, with the help of the .Net Graphics Device Interface (GDI++) • Forms are quite easy to build with the Visual Studio Designers • Lots of controls are available in the toolbox • Intellisense and the Object Browser make learning very fast.

18. Simple Text Editing Demo • It is relatively easy to build Forms that: • open and save files using a FileDialog. • Read files from Streams and edit text in a TextBox. • The Stream and TextBox do almost all the work. • Uses menus to interact with files or set program behaviours. • www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CSE681/code/project2HelperF05

20. Programs with Communicating Forms • Often we want to use more than one Form in a program. • That means that we have to provide a way for them to communicate. • Each Form that needs to contact another must have a reference to it. • That happens automatically for the parent. The parent creates a Child Form attached to a reference it holds onto for later use. • For the Child to talk back, the Parent must pass it a reference to itself, usually in the Childs constructor. • For these conversations to be useful, both Parent and Child must provide functions for the other to call. • www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CSE681/code/project2HelperF05

22. An Example – Form with Browse Control • If our program needs more than a simple FileDialog provides, we may wish to build a more sophisticated or specialized control. • On the next page you will see an example of a Form, written in managed C++ invoking the services of a Browse Control, written in C#. • www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/code/demoCppWinForm

24. Frame Window based on Form • The next slide illustrates a WinForm application that behaves like a Frame Window: • It paints is client area with: • An image • A drawn text caption • A line • But it also has inserted a control, showing mouse coordinates. This illustrates that controls can be used on Frame Windows: • They paint their own surfaces • They can react to event messages from their parent window. • www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/code/CSharpWinForm

26. End of Presentation