You can use the Layout Manager transparently inside any existing container (CWnd, CView, CDialog, and more). You can also link it to any arbitrary layout element (CWnd control or a non-windowed entity like a bitmap or DC image). For these reasons, the Layout Manager is an ideal infrastructure base for providing a generic docking mechanism.

One of the benefits of the Advanced Docking Window architecture is that you can use it seamlessly with existing ControlBar-based docking windows. The ADW architecture shrinks the client area to accommodate its docking infrastructure the same way an OLE shrinks a frame window's client area to accommodate its own toolbars. This allows any existing dockable controlbars, including MFC's toolbars and status bar and Stingray's customizable toolbars/menubars and docking views, to cooperate with no adverse interaction with the ADW docking infrastructure. In addition, because you can wrap any CWnd in a dockable ADW node, you can migrate an existing CControlBar to the advanced architecture.

Some of the main features of this architecture are as follows:

• Docking inside an MDI childframe.

• Docking between different parent windows (for example, between MDI child and mainframe).

• Fixed-sized docking windows. Resizing at run time requires some customization.

• Realtime Office-97 style docking (for example, instant docking with no prediction rectangles).

• Indefinite nesting of docking windows (a docking window containing docking windows).

• Alternate docking layout logic that negotiates left/right first, top-bottom second and more.

• Simplified docking API and implementation procedure. Requires less than five lines of code.

• Lightweight implementation that does not depend on existing frame window classes. You can use ADW with the MFC frame window classes.