The Classic Guide to ATL–Now Updated for ATL 8 and Visual Studio 2005

Four leading Windows programming experts systematically reveal ATL’s inner workings, explaining not just how ATL works, but why it works the way it does. Client-side developers will master ATL’s resources for windowing, COM control, MFC integration, web service proxy generation, and more. Server-side programmers will discover ATL’s full COM server and object services, and its extensive support for high-throughput, high-concurrency web applications, and services. Every Windows developer will learn powerful ways to increase flexibility, reduce overhead, and maximize transparency and control.

•           Discover ATL’s internals through diagrams, example code, and internal ATL implementation code

•           Walk through wizards that simplify ATL usage in common applications

•           Master string handling in C++, COM, and ATL

•           Leverage ATL smart types, including CComPtr, CComQIPtr, CComBSTR, and CComVariant

•           Understand and choose the right options for implementing IUnknown

•           Create glue code that exposes COM objects from COM servers

•           Use canned interface implementations to support object persistence, COM

            collections, enumerators, and connection points

•           Build standalone applications and UI components with ATL window classes

            and controls

•           Use ATL Server to develop web applications that run on Microsoft IIS

Chris Tavares is currently a software development engineer in the Microsoft patterns and practices group, where he strives to help developers learn the best way to develop on the Microsoft platform. He first touched a computer in third grade, doing hand-assembly of machine code on an Intel 8080 machine with 512 bytes (yes, bytes) of memory, a hex keypad, and 7 segment LCD display. He’s been digging into computers and software ever since.

Kirk Fertitta is CTO of Pacific MindWorks, a leading provider of tools and services for electronic test and measurement. With his team at Pacific MindWorks, Kirk works extensively on code generation technology and Visual Studio extensibility. He is also a .NET/C# instructor for Pluralsight.

Brent Rector, president and founder of Wise Owl Consulting, is a noted speaker, consultant, and author, specializing in .NET, ASP.NET, XML, COM+, and ATL.

Chris Sells is a program manager for the Connected Systems Division. He’s written several books, including Programming Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms Programming in C#, and ATL Internals. In his free time, Chris hosts various conferences and makes a pest of himself on Microsoft internal product team discussion lists. More information about Chris, and his various projects, is available at http://www.sellsbrothers.com.