Introduction

The Microsoft® Foundation Class (MFC) library for the Windows® CE operating system is both a mature, comprehensive class library and a complete object-oriented application framework designed to help the developer build applications, components, and controls for Windows CE-based platforms. The developer can use the Microsoft Foundation Classes for Windows CE to create anything from a simple dialog box-based application to a sophisticated application that employs the full MFC document/view architecture. MFC can also be used for Windows CE to create full-featured Microsoft® ActiveX® controls and ActiveX containers.

The developers who have experience using MFC for desktop applications will find MFC for Windows CE very similar and the migration to MFC for Windows CE will be smooth.

MFC supports a number of classes to help the developers write applications using those utility classes. For example if the developer wants to use a hash data structure then there is no need to design the data structure from scratch. Instead the developer can use a CMap class already defined in MFC and the application will be made quite fast.

Microsoft Foundation Classes provides a framework of a number of utility classes and provides the developer with a number of programming options.

Microsoft® eMbedded Visual C++® 3.0 toolkits contain all the development tools and wizards needed for building MFC for Windows CE applications. Several MFC classes are used in the design of Embedded Shruti and the details of the classes will be provided in Chapter 4 which explains the design of Embedded Shruti.