VS 2008, MFC: add OnInitDialog - how?

It appears that you don't even have to open the header file and mess around placing the cursor... After creatingthe class, select the class in the ClassView pane and you can change overrides/messages/events in the Property pane as described above.


Open Class Wizard, then go to Virtual Functions Tab. Double Click on which functions you want to override


Don't feel stupid, it took me forever to figure this out when I first moved from VC6 to VS2008!

Anyway, and also for my own reference, here are the complete steps for adding a dialog box and overriding the OnInitDialog method:

  1. Select Resource View and expand the .rc file.
  2. Right-click the Dialog entry in the tree view and select Insert Dialog.
  3. Select the Properties window. (Note: If you don't see this window, select the View > Other Windows > Properties Window menu item.)
  4. In the Properties window, set the ID for the dialog, e.g., IDD_MYDIALOG.
  5. Right click the dialog in the resource editor and select Add Class. Note: if you have IE8 installed, this may produce an Internet Explorer Script Error. See this blog post for details on how to correct this.
  6. In the MFC Class Wizard dialog box, enter the class name, e.g., CMyDialog, select CDialog as the base class, then press Finish. This will create files named MyDialog.cpp and MyDialog.h and add them to your project.

To override the OnInitDialog method in the CMyDialog class:

  1. Open the file MyDialog.h.
  2. Select the Properties window.
  3. Place the cursor on the line that reads class CMyDialog : public CDialog. (The top of the Properties window should show "CMyDialog VCCodeClass" - this is important, because the Properties window is highly context sensitive, and you get different options depending on the location of the cursor in the editor.)
  4. Click the Overrides icon in the Properties window.
  5. Scroll down the properties window to find OnInitDialog.
  6. Click the down arrow against this entry and select <Add> OnInitDialog. This should create your CMyDialog::OnInitDialog function.

I hope this helps!