Attn C++ Programmers

[demonmaster3k]

For those of you who are disappointed with Microsoft's default Windows forms tools available in Visual C++ 2008 comes great hope. Recently, Microsoft made a new tool set that extends upon that which came with the Visual C++ software. This software upgrade (which comes at no additional price) gives you the ability to make Office 2003 and Office 2007 apps among other things. I know this may be no big news for those of you who are already using 3rd party software such as Telerik, but here's a chance for you to beautify your applications.

Please note this current software is in its beta phase and may be buggy.



MFC Beta Now Available

A beta version of a major MFC/TR1 feature pack is now available for download. Please note that this feature pack is only supported on systems which have the English language (ENU) version of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite or Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition installed.
These components allow developers to create applications with the “look and feel” of the most popular Microsoft products - including Office, Internet Explorer, and Visual Studio. With this update, you’ll be able to build applications that utilize:
·Office Ribbon style interface
·Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP look and feel
·Modern Visual Studio-style docking toolbars and panes
·Fully customizable toolbars and menus
·A rich set of advanced GUI controls
·Advanced MDI tabs and groups
·And much more!
In addition, this release includes an implementation of TR1. Portions of TR1 are scheduled for adoption in the upcoming C++0x standard as the first major addition to the ISO 2003 standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as:
·Smart pointers
·Regular expression parsing
·New containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc)
·Sophisticated random number generators
·Polymorphic function wrappers
·Type traits
·And more!
Please note that the beta installation may require Visual Studio 2008 media be available during setup. This will be resolved in the final release.
Enjoy!
The Visual C++ Development Team

Visual Studio Feature Pack (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=d466226b-8dab-445f-a7b4-448b326c48e7&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2 fa%2fc%2fa%2facaf4f79-2210-4034-94bb-f7e15eb335f5%2fVS90-VCFeaturePack-Beta-KB945273-x86x64-ENU.exe)

Documentation (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=0d805d4e-2dc2-47c7-8818-a9f59de4cd9b&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2 fc%2fa%2f2%2fca2b4352-b4a7-4a8d-a473-d570e89088b0%2fVisual_C%2b%2b_2008_Feature_Pack_Be ta_Documentation.exe)

[Kornman00]

Tbh, sounds like a despite move for getting people to upgrade\move to 08...I really don't know why they've waited until fucking now to do this shit. They've had since VS 2002...

Thanks for the link though

[CrAsHOvErRide]

Finally the original ribbon....

EDIT: Funny, the download link is not working for me.

[demonmaster3k]

dunno y, it worked for me (must be an MS server problem) try reporting it on MSDN forums.

as for getting to use it with VS express, good luck the product reqs says use with VS team or VS pro.

[CrAsHOvErRide]

There is no VS express...only the express editions...I'm running VS08 pro. I only upgraded in the hope there would be better support for Vista/64-bit.

[Kornman00]

05 works just fine with Vista 32bit, even before SP1

[CrAsHOvErRide]

I'm running 64-bit and I just hate all that extra protection. Is that integrity level shit also on 32-bit? Duno some APIs don't work for me. I installed SP1 then it wanted some other service pack which I installed eventually then it needs Admin rights all the time...blah...blah...I just installed VS08 with hope that they might improve support for 64-bit.

I mean seriously why would I need a special SDK just to compile my apps into 64-bit....

[Kornman00]

Because 32bit architecture isn't the exact same as 64bit's...

[CrAsHOvErRide]

Because 32bit architecture isn't the exact same as 64bit's...
Tell me.

But why do I have to download an extra 200MB SDK? They could have added it to the 7GB Visual Studio + 2GB Library DVD :p

It's just I don't see a considerable (or at least profitable) update from VS05 to VS08.

[demonmaster3k]

updated the first post, now the download links for both the documentation and the library are useable. these are direct links from MS

[CrAsHOvErRide]

Downloaded. Also, I take everything back. The 64-bit SDK is included.