I won the first price maintaining a big vb6 application that uses a large number of external controls
(big means: so big that rewriting it from scratch currently is not an option).
I'm looking for a smooth upgrade path to vb.net, replacing the 3rd party controls by more standard ones.
Is there an easy replacement for the Sheridian 3D controls? (I do not care about visual effects, functionality is the point.)
It's worth considering the commercial automatic migration tools VB Upgrade Companion from Artinsoft and VB Migration Partner from Francesco Balena.
They both support the Threed32.ocx SS controls. I think they both offer the choice of replacing with .Net equivalents.
Artinsoft are currently offering a free version of their product that can convert up to 10,000 lines of code.
Related
Currently I am working in a project that uses MFC a lot, but it seems to me that MFC technology is not widely used nowadays. How deprecated is MFC? What are the alternatives for it? I am using VS2010 on Windows.
Thank you for your answers.
Windows Forms and WPF are becoming more and more popular these days,
but seeing that a new version of MFC was released just a few months ago (see here) I wouldn't call it deprecated just yet.
Yes, MFC is not what you would call state-of-the-art. If you are starting a new (UI) application from scratch, you should come up with really strong reasons to use MFC (for example, you have already existing code). There are many disadvantages, for exeample the document/view archtiecture, which is only suitable for small UI applications or the high amount of customization you need to put in, if you want controls that are not included in this framework (and you certainly will at some point). Additionally, it is not that easy to test MFC classes, which you should have in mind as well.
Widely used are approaches with a MVC (model-view-controller) architecture. You can read more about these two archiectures here:
Document / View as used in MFC
Model View Controller
As you are considering MFC, I assume you already have knowledge in C++. Therefore, the Qt Framework from Trolltech / Nokia might be interesting for you. It supports MVC architecture, is cross-platform compatible and still actively developed.
MFC is not so bad. The problem is that most of the components (windows/widgets) are pretty bad or more precisely very inflexible. As Hans said it's 18 years of backward compatibility and therefore every clock cycle and memory byte counted. This hurts today.
I'm using it because Windows Forms and WPF is just not useable for cross platform GUI development where the lingua franca of the backend is C or C++ (if Java is not an option for your project for whatever reason).
Depending on what you want to do and how important a very native looking GUI is, MFC might be the only choice, especially when you can afford to buy third party components and use the feature-pack or Ribbons.
I not commenting on QT/GTK/FLTK or other toolkit as long as you don't tell us more about your project
Almost all Windows applications with GUI (WinForms or Native) use GDIPlus.
But this technology is quite old, and it shows many limitations.
Alternatives are WPF, or Silverlight, Flash? But Developer Tools like Visual Studio and Delphi still use GDIPlus as reference.
When will this change? ANd moreover: will there be a portability? Like the Delphi VCL will in future be ported to a new technology maintaining backwards compatibility? (for ex TButton is GDI, in future it can be something else).
UPDATE: Maybe my question can be stated as "will future OS render GUI Widgets without GDI+ but using newer technology, a kind of builtin SIlverlight/Flash?"
For native programs, WPF has already replaced GDI+ in my view, but since GDI+ and WinForms have been in play for a long time, it will take a long time to get the majority of developers to go over to this new technology, even if it has a lot of great features and possibilities that GDI+ does not even come close to.
Visual Studio still have support for WinForms/GDI+ of course, but since Visual Studio 2008 built in support for WPF have been there, and is working just fine.
Silverlight and Flash will never be a mainstream replacement for a native application.
We're a C++ & .NET house, and we use WTL for developing GUI apps for native projects. We don't use GDIplus though, we stick with regular GDI calls.
It is a sticking point, and it's extremely difficult to
Write GUI software using WTL/GDI
Find developers who can do WTL/GDI
Train developers to do WTL/GDI
We're currently evaluating Qt as a replacement for our GUI coding, but at £3k per developer seat, it's an expensive option.
What GUI toolkit does Valve use for Steam? Is it Qt? I am interested in using the same toolkit for a project.
According to Valve itself:
"VGUI is Valve's proprietary Graphical User Interface. All Source and Steam applications use VGUI to draw windows, dialogs and menus. It also handles localization: the displaying of text in the user's preferred language. "
That's interesting, maybe if you guys do some research you can have it working in your programming language. I'll download the SDK to see if I can make it work with Java :)
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/VGUI_Documentation
Having had experience with the Source engine I know that Valve have an library called VGUI which they use for all their games and many of their tools (when in game the library sits on top of the Source renderer, when in tools it sits on top of the Windows API I believe). Although I can’t answer the question with 100% certainty I suspect that this is what they use for Steam as well (I seem to recall some Steam updates that mentioned VGUI) – I would be surprised if the new beta uses a different library.
Even if it is not using VGUI, given what I know of Valve I would think they will have written something else entirely in-house.
So, it is (almost certainly) proprietary and highly unlikely to ever be available for third party use (unless you have the funds to buy a Source engine license).
Steam only runs on Windows and predates QT for Windows, so I'd have to guess something else.
Since Steam has had the same GUI since 2003, chances are it uses some variant of MFC. It also uses an embedded Internet Explorer web browser for its Store and Community sections.
However, I can't give any guarantees about what the version currently in Beta uses. It looks quite a bit different and includs the Webkit rendering engine instead of using IE. It may use Webkit for everything rather than drawing their own GUIs.
Does this answer the question?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/02/25/0640233/Steam-UI-Update-Beta-Drops-IE-Rendering-For-WebKit
I'm a C programmer with lots of server code experience (AIX, HPUX, some Linux) I need to write a GUI program for Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7) which requires CAD-like drawing functions and lots of data entry forms (it's a specialised engineering app). I've written some Win32 code many years ago using Gupta SQLwindows (now Centura Builder). The bosses have decreed that it "must be" compiled code. My perception is that C+SDK could do the job but with considerable effort and that C# + Windows Forms would be more capable, but I'm a bit concerned about the .Net framework requirement.
Based upon your experiences, What would you suggest?
If .Net, which version? 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 ??
I'm not familiar with Centura Builder, so I am not sure at what level of abstraction your prior Windows programming experience is. If you choose the native code route using C/C++ and Win32, be sure to buy a copy of Programming Windows by Charles Petzold. Reading the first few chapters of this book can help you decide if you want to go the native code route as well.
If you choose the .NET Framework and C#, and if you do not need the version 3.5-specific features (such as LINQ for database access), I recommend choosing version 3.0. It is a built-in component on Windows Vista, so you don't have to package the runtime with your program installer unless you have to support Windows XP (which you probably do, so never mind :). With version 3.0, you get Windows Presentation Foundation (to use instead of or along with Windows Forms), which gives you a lot of graphical capability without a lot of effort. I'm not knowledgeable about CAD, so I don't know if WPF would provide the drawing functions that you need, but it may provide a great platform upon which you can write your own drawing routines.
EDIT: I missed your Windows version requirements on first reading, particularly the Windows 2000 requirement. I guess you'd have to go with .NET Framework version 2.0 and Windows Forms. I have to ask, though: Wouldn't it be cost-effective to improve your engineers' productivity by upgrading their eight-year-old machines to something newer and faster and therefore get rid of your Windows 2000 support requirement?
If you're going the .NET route, you will have to use .NET 2.0 because .NET 3.0 and above is only supported for Windows XP and above (Vista, 7, 2003, 2008).
I personally wouldn't sweat the .NET framework requirement. It's a one time install on each machine, that can be streamlined through Windows updates if needed.
If you don't want .NET, Qt + C++ is definitely the way to go; it certainly beats C and Win32. .NET still allows much faster development than even Qt though. Qt has the advantage of being fast and easy to deploy (no .NET requirement), and makes portability much easier (if you want to port to Linux or Mac).
If you must use native code then I would strongly suggest RAD Studio from Codegear / Embarcadero, it's a studio product that ships with Delphi (the object oriented language that evolved from Turbo Pascal) and C++ Builder, if you are already familiar with C/C++ then it's going to be very simple for you to pick it up. The Visual Component Library that is shared by both languages is extendable, powerful and RAD.
If you are able to use Managed code, then C# with Winforms is easy to use, WPF may be a better UI choice long term, but it has a steeper learning curve.
Depending on the complexity requirements of the CAD-like drawing, I'd go with C# + Windows Forms, or even more preferrably, C# + WPF.
WPF would make the drawing much, much cleaner than trying to do it in GDI. This is especially true if you're going to do some 3D "drawing", as you can do a lot of (simple) 3D objects directly in WPF. C# will make your GUI programming much more productive than trying to do it in C/C++ with the windows API directly (or even MFC).
Personally, the .NET requirement is minimal in my opinion, but that's really up to the powers that be in your organization...
If it must be compiled code than I would recommend WTL of MFC but it would be much more faster (in terms of develeopment cost) to use C# + WinForms or WPF.
You can do everything with C or C++ / Win32 api
(Win32 samples for CAD-like drawing are in MSDN..)
I need to develop a simple Windows application with 6 or 7 forms. Its main purpose is to manage files and launch a external program.
These are my wishes, in descending importance order
Free
Be Visual, I mean, the possibility to paint forms and object in the screen.
Possibility to carry it in a USB pen-drive.
I need a light/small size language, not a very complex one. My program is going to have very few forms and its functionality is simple.
Is there any language that meet this wishes? If not, is there any commercial one?
I would use Visual C# Express if I were you.
As others have suggested, C# isn't a bad choice.
Personally I'd use wxPython. If you want a GUI to help you lay out the forms, wxDesigner is very good.
Take a look at Visual Basic Express. IMNTBHO, the learning curve for VB.Net is shallower than the C# equivalent.
Failing that (as much as it pains me to say this) take a look at MS-Access (and a runtime install for carrying it around with you). It's not free, but it's also not terribly expensive. The learning curve is even shallower than VB.Net.
You mentioned wanting your program to be portable on a USB drive, so the previous answers suggesting C# and VB.Net are good as long as all of the machines you'll be using your program on have the .Net framework installed.
If you need to run your program on systems without .Net, you'll need to look at programming environments that can either make a native .exe or can wrap scripts in an executable. Which of those is right depends on your needs and programming experience, but I'd take a look at Lazarus/Free Pascal, C++, or Python (with py2exe).
Visual Studio Express editions seems good for your requirement.
Check: http://www.microsoft.com/Express/
Another vote for Lazarus/Free Pascal. It works from stick, and generates (on Windows 32/64/CE) standalone binaries, and you have full access to the windows api and other windwos specific gadgets (COM)
I'd recommend Turbo Explorer. It's a free RAD IDE that'll generate native win32 apps in C++ or Delphi without the need for a managed framework like .NET.
It couldn't be simpler to use. Just drag and drop your components on your form, compile, and run.
I'd ordinarily push for C# or something on the .NET framework but the stipulation of running on a flash disk means you need something that compiles natively. In addition to Lazarus/FreePascal mentioned above you might also want to investigate CodeGear Delphi