In this article, you will learn about GuiToolkit which is a complete set of classes based on MFC. It allows you to build applications with nice and sophisticated interfaces such as Visual Studio .NET, Office 2003, etc.
Introduction
GuiToolkit is a complete set of classes based on MFC, that allows you to build applications with nice and sophisticated interfaces such as Visual Studio .NET, Office 2003, etc. The primary target is to have a complete free library that can be used without restrictions and suitable to user or programmers needs. This class set includes file management, connection through ADO, up to complex user's interface classes.
Guitoolkit was developed based on Paul Dilascia’s classes (father of almost all of this kind of libraries), including features like a Menu System and a floating bar (Thanks Paul for let me “ruin” all its wonderful code, hope you understand that I did it with sincerely my best intention); about the NewMenu Class (written by Bruno Podetti). I used “Hook” system. As a principal fact, I have tried to focus on code simplicity, in the way that you could isolate a class to understand it. Don’t expect to find in this library complex classes embedded into other, or sophisticated programming techniques.
I’ve tried to respect and preserve original class names of different authors, so every class that doesn’t begin with “Gui”, wasn’t written by me. As you could see, I’m the author of the 9x% of this classes.
GuiToolkit Users Guide
The code is free to use, except code that is not written by me, anyways you cannot take total or partial control of this code. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty, without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Take your time to understand the given examples, and how to use the classes. In any case, I appreciate that someone wants to document this library. This library has a few or a lot of troubles, I hope that you can understand and forgive these human failures, like: There’s no documentation available, and there’s not tech support and some bugs in Windows 98.
You can use this library as you want and to demonstrate good or bad programming techniques, for your commercial application, to play, for improve it and share with us changes and to make me feel that my job gave you a plus making free code, in other words you don’t have to ask anybody for permissions this code is FREE in the way you respect author’s rights that let me use their code; and if you want to give me some credits (your welcome!), or you could show me, tell me and give the personal satisfaction of watching your own GuiToolkit built apps! “I appreciate it a lot”.
You can criticize the code being respectful, insults can freely direct to me but exclude Paul Dilascia, Bruno Podetti and other authors that I mention in credits section; they’re not guilty about my creation.
New Features
- OneNote ® Style MDI tabs
- Office ® XP/2003 look
- Auto hide dockable bars
- Docking tab colors
- Visual Studio .NET look
- And all components that you already know!
If you want the latest changes, visit the library web page http://www.beyondata.com/.
Some Examples
Office menu bar XP styles provided:
You can dispose of almost all controls in a dialog box using the CGuiStaticStandar class and obtain an interface such as next image.
View more http://www.beyondata.com/.
What Comes Next?
Many things should be improved in the close future, errors, more controls, a text editor, to improve some classes, windows docking, autohidden functions, etc.
Credit
- Thanks to Paul Dilascia VC++ MFC Guru, to allow using his class set for the menu management, thanks a lot I learned a huge things of his code.
- Thanks to Bruno Podetti for your splendid menu class.
- Thanks to David Yuheng Zhao for your
VisualStylesXP class. - Thanks to Mohammad Ahmad Khaleel for your
Cgradient class.
History
- 31st July, 2002 - Updated source code
- 20th August, 2002 - Updated source code
- 10th January, 2003 - Updated source code
- 18th August, 2004 - Updated source code
License
This article has no explicit license attached to it, but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt, please contact the author via the discussion board below.
A list of licenses authors might use can be found here.
