Visual C++ 6 Unleashed

By MICKEY WILLIAMS and David Bennett

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • About the Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • How to Use This Book
  • What You Need to Use This Book
  • What's New in Visual C++ 6.0
  • Contacting the Main Author
  • Part I: Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Visual C++ 6.0 Environment
  • Part II: MFC Programming
  • Chapter 2. MFC Class Library Overview
    • The Application Framework
    • Creating an MFC Application with MFC AppWizard
    • The CWinApp Class
    • The CWinThread Class
    • The CCmdTarget Class
    • The CObject Class
    • Runtime Type Information
    • Debugging Support
    • Putting It All Together
    • The Message Pump
    • Summary
  • Chapter 3. MFC Message Handling Mechanism
  • Chapter 4. The Document View Architecture
  • Chapter 5. Creating and Using Dialog Boxes
  • Chapter 6. Working with Device Contexts and GDI Objects
  • Chapter 7. Creating and Using Property Sheets
  • Chapter 8. Working with the File System
  • Chapter 9. Using Serialization with File and Archive Objects
  • Part III: Internet Programming with MFC
  • Chapter 10. MFC and the Internet Server API (ISAPI)
  • Chapter 11. The WinInet API
  • Chapter 12. MFC HTML Support
  • Part IV: Advanced Programming Topics
  • Chapter 13. Using the Standard C++ Library
  • Chapter 14. Error Detection and Exception Handling Techniques
  • Chapter 15. Debugging and Profiling Strategies
  • Chapter 16. Multithreading
  • Chapter 17. Using Scripting and Other Tools to Automate the Visual C++ IDE
  • Part V: Database Programming
  • Chapter 18. Creating Custom AppWizards
  • Chapter 19. Database Overview
  • Chapter 20. ODBC Programming
  • Chapter 21. MFC Database Classes
  • Chapter 22. Using OLE DB
  • Chapter 23. Programming with ADO
  • Part VI: MFC Support for COM and ActiveX
  • Chapter 24. Overview of COM and Active Technologies
  • Chapter 25. Active Documents
  • Chapter 26. Active Containers
  • Chapter 27. Active Servers
  • Chapter 28. ActiveX Controls
  • Part VII: Using the Active Template Library
  • Chapter 29. ATL Architecture
  • Chapter 30. Creating COM Objects Using ATL
  • Chapter 31. Creating ActiveX Controls Using ATL
  • Chapter 32. Using ATL to Create MTS and COM+ Components
  • Part VIII: Finishing Touches
  • Chapter 33. Adding Windows Help
  • Part IX: Appendix

The CWinThread Class

One of the major differences between Windows 3.1 and the 32-bit versions of Windows, such as Windows 98 and Windows 2000 is the use of preemptive multitasking. Although Windows 3.1 supports multiple tasks, only one task could be running at one time, and nobody else could run without the running task giving up the processor. Win32 supports true multitasking through the use of threads, which allow more than one thing to be going on at the same time. True, most processors really execute only one instruction stream at a time, but as far as this chapter is concerned, all threads run at the same time.

When your application first starts, it has one—and only one—thread, known as the primary thread. This thread is encapsulated by the CWinApp class that you have derived. This means that a pointer to your CWinApp object is also a pointer to the CWinThread object for the primary thread. Once your application gets going, it can create as many new threads as it wants to manage various tasks.

You learn more about working with threads in Chapter 16, "Multithreading," but for now let's move on to the base class of CWinThread , CCmdTarget .

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