Visual C++ and MFC Programming 2nd Edition

Chapter 2 Variables and Identifiers Visual C++ and MFC Fundamentals

Figure 22: A Window Frame with Title Bar..............................................................................

In all of your windows, you should specify a window name. If you omit it, the users of

your window would have difficulty identifying it. Here is an example of such a window:

Figure 23: A Window Frame with no Caption..........................................................................

2.2.2 Reference to the Main Window............................................................

After creating a window, to let the application use it, you can use a pointer to the class

used to create the window. In this case, that would be (a pointer to) CFrameWnd. To use

the frame window, assign its pointer to the CWinThread::m_pMainWnd member

variable. This is done in the InitInstance() implementation of your application.

At any time, to get a pointer to m_pMainWnd anywhere in your program, you can call

the AfxGetMainWnd() function. Its syntax is:

CWnd* AfxGetMainWnd();

This function simply returns a pointer to CWnd. Because all MFC’s window objects are

based on the CWnd class, this function can give you access to the main class used for the

application.

Practical Learning: Creating a Simple Window

1. To create a frame for the window, in the file, type the following: