Product Features
The following sections describe some of the major features of Objective Toolkit.
MFC Extension Classes
Simple Control Classes. Objective Toolkit consists of a variety of powerful classes that provide advanced GUI components, such as:
• Owner-draw, bitmap, menu, and well buttons.
• Color well, pop-up color well, masked edit, browse edit, and editable list box controls.
• 2-D and 3-D tab controls/tabbed windows.
• Calculator, calendar, currency, and date/time edit controls.
• Custom status bar, custom toolbar, and a tree control with enhanced functionality.
The source code for every window and control class is in the Src\Toolkit\Controls subdirectory.
User Interface Extensions. Objective Toolkit includes a number of user-interface extensions that address high-level UI design issues. A user-interface extension is a class or set of classes that enhances the look, configuration capability, or information content of your user interface. The source code for all MDI alternatives and enhancements is in the Src\Toolkit\UI subdirectory.
Image Classes. Objective Toolkit contains a group of classes that let you read, write, convert between, and manipulate popular image formats. Supported formats include DIB, GIF, JPEG, PCX, TGA, and TIFF. The source code for each image class is in the Src\Toolkit\Image subdirectory.
Docking Windows Architecture. The extended control bar architecture is a set of MFC extensions that augment the docking window features available in MFC version 4.x. There are two categories of extended control bar classes: control bar derivatives and frame window derivatives. Control bar classes include:
• Control bar and control bar manager
• Dialog bar, toolbar and toolbar manager
• Status bar
MDI Alternatives and Enhancements. Objective Toolkit implements several MDI alternatives and enhancements. The Multiple Top-level Interface (MTI) and the Floating Document Interface (FDI) are alternatives to MDI. The Workbook Document Interface (WDI) and Gradient Caption class enhance MDI. The source code for all alternatives and enhancements is in the Src\Toolkit\MDI directory.
Objective Toolkit provides replacements for MFC’s frame window classes that add significant functionality. The Frame window classes include SECFrameWnd, SECMDIChildWnd, and SECMDIFrameWnd.
Toolbar Classes. The Stingray toolbar replacement for CToolBar supports the enhanced docking window features. It also gives you the ability to resize the toolbar when it is docked and maintain compatibility with our enhanced docking windows implementation. These classes also support drag-and-drop customization, large/small icon view modes, and an Microsoft Office look-and-feel.
Utility Classes. Objective Toolkit also provides classes that are not related to the user interface. For example:
• SECRegistry provides a sophisticated interface to the registry.
• SECRandom supports random number generation.
• SECFileSystem provides an encapsulation of the run-time access to the file system.
• SECCryptoFile is a CFile derivative that provides encryption.
• SECCompressFile is a CFile derivative that provides compression.
The source code for all utility classes is in the Src\Toolkit\Utility subdirectory.
View Classes. The Objective Toolkit view classes are CView extensions that provide features such as advanced zooming and panning. The zooming feature lets the user zoom in and out of a view and automatically handles all mapping mode changes. Panning is a popular scrolling extension used in Windows applications like Delrina WinFax. The source code for all view classes is in the Src\Toolkit\Views subdirectory.
Full Source Code
The complete source code for Objective Toolkit is included with the product. The source code is indispensable for debugging, using, and inheriting from an MFC extension class. The source code is in the \Include\Toolkit and \Src\Toolkit directories. File names reflect the classes they contain.
Compatibility and Build Options
For maximum flexibility, you can use Objective Toolkit with the latest Microsoft Visual Studio compilers (see in the Getting Started part. Moreover, you can use Objective Toolkit as a static library with MFC static, as a static library with MFC as a DLL, or as a DLL with MFC as a DLL. Objective Toolkit supports Unicode. Unicode and non-Unicode variants exist for all static and DLL builds.
Once the Objective Toolkit libraries are built, these configurations are transparent to you.