What's a View?

From a user's standpoint, a view is an ordinary window that the user can size, move, and close in the same way as any other Windows-based application window. From the programmer's perspective, a view is a C++ object of a class derived from the MFC library CView class. Like any C++ object, the view object's behavior is determined by the member functions (and data members) of the class—both the application-specific functions in the derived class and the standard functions inherited from the base classes.

With Visual C++, you can produce interesting applications for Windows by simply adding code to the derived view class that the AppWizard code generator produces. When your program runs, the MFC library application framework constructs an object of the derived view class and displays a window that is tightly linked to the C++ view object. As is customary in C++ programming, the view class code is divided into two source modules—the header file (H) and the implementation file (CPP).