An embedded Windows GUI application (plug-in and play GUI)

This is a Windows GUI application which has the ability to embed different functionality sub-module and manage them. The main module and sub-modules commonly are Document-View window frame.

This design is similar to COM mechanism, but directly and simply use DLL to realize the sub-module. The method to put Document-View child window module to DLL can refer JS Byju's article Separating the views of an MDI application into different DLLs

First, design a set of base-class with standard inferface functions, they are export base classes CStandardDoc, CChildFrame, CStandardView, and export functions InitTemplate, GetModuleData. All embeded sub-modules' windows classes and main module windows classes are derived from these base class. At run time, all sub-modules' windows' View share the main module's Document object, so the control and data exchange between sub-module and main module or sub-module and sub-module are implemented by the Document in main module and Views in sub-module. The CStandardDoc has the member function GetMsgFromView to get information from sub-module View and use UpdateAllView to broadcast the message to all View. The CStandardView has the member function GetMsgFromDocument and OnUpdate for sub-modules' View to receive message from the Document of main module.

This demo is a multimedia type Windows application, one main module, a bitmap show sub-module, a simple math game module and a 3D animation mdoule. The sub-modules are independent, they can be pluged in main module daymaniclly. The config.exe in the demo allow the user decide which sub-module is embeded to main module, which one not.

Download demo project - 74 KB

Download source - 123 KB

Date Last Updated: April 18, 1999