Question

I am a noob C++ Programmer. I want to develop GUI applications. I am using Visual Studio 2010. Normally, Visual Studio Projects begin with the old style interface with a frame with a menu in it. But I want to build an application with more rich Graphical elements. Just like the windows 8 start screen.. or the Visual studio start page. Please teach me how to do those fancy effects.

Edit: I don't like to use flash or JavaFX Java because they need additional programs to be installed before using.

Was it helpful?

Solution

Well, basically you have not much options here. Regarding to your choice (MS Visual Studio) they are:

  • MFC/C++ - not convinient at all, I can say it's a small pain in the ass. But a lot of program were written exactly with a help of MFC library. It's a canonical way :)
  • Windows Forms/C++ - actually it's not usial C++, but C++/CLI. Not so much different, but has a few things to note. You can take a look at C++/CLI Cheat Sheet for example. Not usial, but, hey, you can use Windows Forms!
  • Windows Forms/C# - as for me, this combination is almost perfect. Nothing to add.
  • WPF/C# - even much more interesting. Any control can be modified in any way, but you have to know a lot of tricks and howtos to make all things work. In that case I highly suggest to use WPF Toolkit. Anyway, you can find a lot of cool stuff for WPF (I even made once a mini-SCADA with a bunch of UI elements related to industrial stuff (valve, pumps, etc.)). Do not forget, you can do animation as well. It is pretty easy.
  • Qt addon for MSVS/C++ - the last but not the least option. All UI you make in Qt Quick - GUI IDE. Also you have a greatiest slot/signal interaction model (which was improved in Qt5.0).

My choise now is definitely Qt. It's crossplatform, btw.

OTHER TIPS

For C++ you can create a WinForms (Windows Forms) project.

But nowadays WPF is preferred over WinForms, and WPF is usually used from C# or VB.NET. I'm not sure if it's possible to use from C++, but if so it would have poor support. C# is pretty easy to learn if you already know C++.

If you want to create Windows Store apps in Windows 8, you can also use C++/CX, but that requires VS 2012.

So you really want to make flashy things like these, eh? Well, you can make a Windows Store app, but like previously mentioned it requires Visual Studio 2012.

Take a look at this question too: How to develop unique GUI's in Visual Studio?

Sexy stuff...

You have several options of GUI from which you can choose wxWidgets, Qt, Ultimate++.

or u can use Embarcadero C++ Developer ----> actually Firemonkey is so amazing check it out C++ Builder

Licensed under: CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with StackOverflow
scroll top