Welcome to The VCF Website.

Welcome to the Visual Component Framework (VCF) website. This site will help you get started using the VCF and provide you with links to documentation, downloads, forums and more.

"You know how when someone sees something very good they exclaim 'WOW!'? Then when they see something that is truly inspiring, they say it in a very low, respectful tone? Looking at the quality and breadth of what you have here definitely puts me in the latter category."

Tom Archer - Microsoft Program Manager

The Visual Component Framework is an advanced C++ application framework that makes it easy to produce powerful C++ applications. The framework is a based on a thoroughly modern C++ design and has built in support for Rapid Application Development (RAD). The framework is designed to be portable over multiple platforms and compilers, so you don't have to lose all that work that went into writing your app for a single platform!

If this is your first time here try reading, in more detail, about the features of the VCF by clicking here.

Further information about the VCF can be found in the documentation sections which include in-depth discussions of how to use the framework, as well as the source code generated documentation.

ClassBrowser example with executable link

Submitted by ddiego on Wed, 2008-04-30 20:07. News and Announcements

This is a small utility that shows all of the classes in the VCF's ClassRegistry. One of the cool things about it is that it is able to save various UI states with almost no code:

mainWindow->initializeSettings(true);
That's it! The rest of the individual settings are set in the UI's VFF and the framework does all the work of storing and retrieving them for you.

» read more | 216 reads

Upcoming Fish Taco Release and beyond

Submitted by ddiego on Mon, 2008-04-28 17:22. News and Announcements

Finally, after a very long time, thankfully not in a galaxy far, far away, we are almost ready to make the release you've all been waiting for:

Fish Taco - 0.9.8

The current code is pretty much done, with the exception of an example or two, and further documentation.

» read more | 311 reads

Major IT News: The VCF Project considering buying Yahoo.

Submitted by Giancarlo on Mon, 2008-04-28 16:20. News and Announcements

DATELINE APRIL 28, 2008

April 28, 2008 (The Internet) - A source high up at Yahoo! reports that tentative talks have commenced between Yahoo! executives and members of the VCF Project. The source claimed that the Yahoo! executives were enthusiastic about the bid, which came from nowhere, and felt it was a much more appropriate valuation of the company. Rumors suggest that the VCF Project will be making an offer of $56 per share, making this substantially sweeter deal for Yahoo!.

» read more | 184 reads

Visual Forms and DPI

Submitted by ddiego on Thu, 2008-02-28 03:52. News and Announcements

One of the many things that got fixed in the upcoming Fish Taco release is enhanced support for the Visual Form File format. This enables the developer to put together a UI in much less time than if you had to write all the C++ code by hand. The Form Designer of the VCF Builder is built with this in mind, though that project is still sadly behind. However, one of the features is the ability to specify values using units, with the ability to support custom units if the need arises. Currently the units supported are pixels (the default), inches, centimeters, and points (where a point is 1/72 of an inch). The conversion from unit value to pixel value takes into consideration the current screen DPI, thus allowing you to specify a layout once, and know that it will work correctly no matter the DPI settings. Future units supported will be DLU's (Windows Dialog Units), and percent.

» read more | 602 reads

A new year, a new example, and various other bits of progress

Submitted by ddiego on Mon, 2008-02-11 15:45. News and Announcements

Well it's been a while, but have no fears, progress on the upcoming Fish Taco release is moving forward, albeit slower than I would like.

The latest example was kind of cool, and I wanted to post about it. It is based on a little article by Ryan Paul at Ars Technica: U CAN HAS LOLcats on Linux with Ruby and GTK. This inspired me to write the equivalent using the VCF:

» read more | 672 reads