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Dynamic popup and drop down menus for custom representations

Many applications allow dynamic customization for visual objects or data views. For instance, well known Internet Explorer application provides toolbars customization using a popup menu that appears when the user execute right click mouse action in toolbar zone area.

Internet Explorer sample menu

Other sample where this kind of menu is very useful is when it’s used in order to customize database data representation in Windows controls like List control or grid control. These kind of applications allow data filtering and show/hide columns using this kind of menu. The user just right click on control header and gets what he need.

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Versionable Object’s Serialization using MFC in non Document View applications

Most existing applications operate with data that must be stored and loaded in different times and different locations. The data is stored in text or binary files with a well defined format.
The Problem
Initially, in the first version 1.0, an application operates with data structures that can be stored and loaded. But, next version (2.0) these data structures suffers changes. Some structure’s attributes are added and other could be removed. These things change files format and structure when a new file version is saved.
Question: What happens when you are using an application version 2.0 and you are trying to load old files format (version 1.0)?
Answer: Most cases should cause incompatibility troubles between the current new application and files in old format. This could throw exceptions and the application could have undefined behavior.
That’s why the application must be written in order to be able to open both file versions.
Solution
In order to solve the compatibility issue exist many solutions, more or less professional. The recommended solution is the serialization.
Application window

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