I need to do something which i expected to be was simple - create a tab control which has 2 tabs, implying 2 modes of operation for my app. When user clicks on Tab1, he'll be presented with some buttons and textboxes, and when he clicks Tab2, some other input method. I noticed that there was a CTabCtrl class thats used in MFC to add tabs. However, once I added the tab ctrl using the UI designer, I couldn't specify how many tabs there'll be using property window. Searching on the net, I found some examples but all of them required you to derive from CtabCtrl , create 2 or more child dialogs etc and to write your own custom class. My question is, since I want to do something so basic, why couldn't I do it using the familiar Add Event handler/Add member variable wizard and then handle everything else inside my app's class ? Surely, the default CTabCtrl class can do something useful without needing to derive from it ?