Mfc Smartlabs: An Intelligent Tutoring System

Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive, professional CBT product.
Review: One of the nicest computer based training products I have seen.The content was good and the training method well designed. However, the installation should be improved. Specifically, it relies on the presence of ODBC. The software fails and gives no indication of why if this this requirement is not met. Also, the tutorial will not run under Windows NT since VBX code is used. Considering the preferred C++ development environment is NT, this should be fixed. Also, in NT, when workbook contents are selected the system fails to find winhelp32.exe and temporarily hangs. Other than the installation issues, the product is solid. One further recommendation: It was not immediately clear the relationship between tutorial, workbook, pre and post test and labs. For people who don't like to read manuals (most of us) I would provide a one page diagram of the flow of the training. Visual feedback is very effective. Other than that, I look forward to OLE Smartlabs...

Rating:
Summary: Excellent method to help learn MFC.
Review: The software for this was redone and now runs under NT. This is worth getting to learn the document/view architecture, adding menus, adding dialogs... I would go thru the course and workbooks after reading a book on MFC and doing some exercises. Its also worth reading the MFC4 User's Guide under Online Books. Only drawback I've seen is one is forced to swap Smartlabs/C++ CDs, but this is a minor inconvience compared to the time required to learn MFC