Re: Whither GUI conventions?

From:

"Giovanni Dicanio" <giovanni.dicanio@invalid.com>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.mfc

Date:

Fri, 4 Jan 2008 10:28:18 +0100

Message-ID:

<uQsykQrTIHA.4880@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl>

"David Ching" <dc@remove-this.dcsoft.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:Ev5fj.35926$Pv2.13060@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net...

But I must say that after getting started with WPF, the UI's possible with
that make the ribbon look old fashioned.

A very good addition to MFC could be an XML based description of the GUI,
like WPF does for managed code.

Something like:

<window title="..." ...other attributes>

  <toolbar name="..." other attributes... >
      <buttton name="..." bitmap="..." ...>
      <button>
      <buttton name="..." bitmap="..." ...>
      <button>
   </toolbar>

  <menu>
       ...
   </menu>
</window>

Then the XML GUI description could be parsed and rendered also using some
form of 3D accelerated graphics (DirectX or OpenGL based), with special
effects, fading, rotations, etc. So MFC programmers could have both options
of continue using MFC for "classical style" GUIs, or develop some attractive
"deluxe" GUIs. This would very much contribute to help MFC to *not* "jump
the shark" ;)

These new-style GUIs could also be hosted a "classical" CDialog or
CView-derived classes.

Giovanni