Mickey Williams's Teach Yourself Visual C++ 6 in 24 Hours is a worthy addition to the Sams 24-hour series. In two dozen short and digestible sections, the author gives a "greatest hits" tour of some of the most important features in Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), along with what's new in Visual C++ 6. Along the way, this title also manages to review the basics of the C++ programming language. Early lessons concentrate on building simple MFC programs using basic dialog box controls like buttons, edit controls, list boxes, and combo boxes. Using real code examples, the author moves to the basics of MFC document/view architecture (always a difficult topic to present clearly), menus, and Graphical Device Interface (GDI) graphics programming.
Williams then discusses several common controls (first introduced in Windows 95) for building more sophisticated user interfaces. The advanced section of this tutorial provides an introduction to viewing Dynamic HTML with MFC Web controls. All in all, this group of tutorials is concise and extremely useful for anyone new to MFC control programming.
The book closes with some material on using dialog boxes as application windows (using form views) and the basics of targeting ActiveX controls within Visual C++ 6. It doesn't tell you everything there is to know (no mention of database classes or C++ templates), but if you want a quick introduction that covers some significant technical turf, you'll like this efficiently presented title. -- Richard Dragan
