Visual C++ 4 How-To

If you have to code in MFC you need this book in addition to the Microsoft documentation and at least one other VC++ book. Scott's book uncovers techniques that are well hidden in the MFC documentation and not covered in other books but necessary in real applications. Usually if I am trying to do something slightly different from the standard look I find the answer in Scott's book or it gives me enough hints to figure out a solution. Many are not covered in the other VC++ books. Some important examples show how to change some properties in forms using MFC that are simple to change in VB but would be almost impossible to find in the MFC documentation or figure out by yourself.

This is one of my favorite VC++ books. It has great examples and easy to follow explanations of the subject being covered. I have really learned from this book. Excellent.

Almost all of the programming books I have ever bought that are specific to a particular language product are worthless. They spend 550 of 600 pages describing the product's menu options and toolbar buttons then 40 pages of trivial worthless sample programs and 10 pages of index. This is not one of those books.This book is 650 pages of pertinent and valuable examples and I have used it many times to help me solve many real world problems. I specifically liked that fact that it is the first book I have ever read that described the WM_GETMINMAXINFO message as a method of making CFormView based applications look the way they should. For the record, every other programming book I have that relates to MFC in any way gives naive CFormView examples that look stupid when running and behave stupidly when used.

An amazing amount of topics covered. Very thorough, and concise. No fluff. I constantly refering to it. One bad point: The index is not tabulated correctly, it can be difficult to find subjects. Overall the best book on Visual C++ I've seen yet.

The book is full of skills that helps programmers solve common problems when programming in MFC. Some problems exist: I found one "How-to" appeared twice in different parts of the book. Also, some programs on "Toolbars and Status Bars" have bugs. For example, the "ProgressMeter" application should derive CMeterBar from CStatusBar instead of CStatusBarCtrl. These are minor problems that can be easily corrected - I hope the authors have already done that. Besides all these problems, I still think this is a very good book on MFC programming. It prevents you from reinventing the wheel (many times).