Modern books on native C++ development [closed]

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I was going through the Hilo tutorial series Developing C++ Applications for Windows 7; seemed pretty interesting.

What modern books that go into details of dev开发者_JAVA技巧eloping C++ based applications for Windows 7? It should show how to take advantage of Windows 7 features and based on "modern" C++ (templates, Unicode, etc.). Not looking for old school Petzold or MFC type books (sorry). Also should feature native code development (i.e. no Qt-/wx-type 3rd party libraries). The 3rd party libraries seems to be at least a generation behind and don't seem to leverage the latests features (ex. Ribbon, Animation etc.).

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I'd recommend that you ensure you're familiar with the theory in winprog.org/tutorial, then Ivor Horton's book (below), and then finally check out the WTL library.

The examples on the ribbon code in the Hilo articles use the windows API, which relies on COM objects to create the ribbon. ATL constructs like the CComPtr manage the lifetime of the ribbon objects and interfaces.

Because of this, I'd recommend that you ensure that you understand the basics of writing COM client code - e.g. You should understand CoCreateInstance, QueryInterface and smart pointers. ATL Internals (search on Amazon) is the essential reference on COM, but it is heavy going.

WTL wraps the detail of creating the ribbon and accessing it, but WTL was made for COM programmers looking for a windowing API, so it's not an easy API to begin with if you don't have experience of COM programming with ATL.

WTL supports the latest windows features, like ribbons etc. Don't expect any books on the subject though, there aren't any. M$ open sourced WTL some years ago, so the code is available to read, so you can figure out how everything works by reading the code. It's quite advanced though, you may want to look at it after you've had a look at the alternatives first.

Google uses WTL for the UI for Chrome.

I suspect you should Start with Ivor Horton's beginning Visual C++ 2010, it'll be a good all round introduction.

If you're looking for a great programming book for windows though, you can't do better than windows via c/c++ by Jeff richter - by far the best windows coding book I've ever bought.

If you are interested in WTL, then look at Michael dunn's series wtl for mfc programmers on code project.

Finally, there is no one book that hand hold the would be c++ GUI developer through all this, and that's a big gap in the market. I've often wondered why no one has picked up on this, given the popularity of c++

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I still think that Stroustrup's The C++ programming language is a required read (cover to cover) for every C++ programmer. Then, add the Essential C++/STL series by Scott Meyers for some additional tips and advice.

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I don't know if it's still 'modern', but Modern C++ Design is a great resource on templates and generic algorithms.