MFC Benefits

Once your application is an MFC application, many possibilities are open to you:

• Easy migration to newer versions of MFC and easier ports of 16-bit applications to Win32®.
• Portability to other platforms, such as the Apple® Macintosh® or Windows NT™ on one of several RISC machines.
• Readiness for Windows 95, (code-named "Chicago").
• Database access via Open Database Connectivity (ODBC).
• Much easier implementation of OLE servers, containers, visual editing, and Automation.

Those benefits are in addition to standard MFC support for many features that would otherwise be difficult —such as:

• Toolbars, status bars, dialog bars, and property sheets ("tab dialogs").
• A variety of user-interface models, including single document interface (SDI) and multiple document interface (MDI).
• Splitter windows and other kinds of multiple-view configurations.
• Printing and print preview.
• Document/view architecture with support for file serialization.
• Use of MFC in your DLLs as well as EXEs, and linking with the MFC libraries either statically or dynamically (MFC in a DLL).
• The ability to call the Windows API from MFC code.
• Support for Unicode (under Windows NT) and double-byte character sets (DBCS) for international markets.
• And a great deal more.