Visual C++ Libraries update

Early in August, I blogged about our early thinking on Visual C++ post Orcas. The C++ team and I got a huge amount of great feedback on this. Thanks for the same.

The team is looking at the feedback and finalizing plans for where we should be focusing to move Visual C++ forward. One of the first areas you will see us invest is in native libraries. The team is working on a significant update to the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). We will be delivering this as an update to Visual Studio 2008 in the first half of 2008. We will have a preview of the same sometime around the early part of the new year.

Using this update to MFC, developers will be able to create applications with the “look and feel” of Microsoft’s Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio. Some of the specific features include Office 2007 Ribbon bar look, Internet Explorer look with rebars and task panes, Visual Studio look with sophisticated docking functionality, auto hide windows, property grids and the like. You can also enable your users to customize your application through live drag and drop of menu items and toolbar buttons.

In addition, we will also be delivering TR1 support. TR1 is the first major addition to the standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as smart pointers, regular expression parsing, new containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc.), sophisticated random number generators, polymorphic function wrappers, type traits and more.

Stay tuned for an early preview of this in the beginning of the new year. Meanwhile, you can check out the C++ team blog for more information. You should also check out our Channel 9 video on the new MFC libraries at https://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=355087.

 

Namaste!