Windows Forms Programming in C Microsoft NET Development Series




Everything changes in the Microsoft .NET Framework and the C# language, including the creation of graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Windows Forms Programming in C# explains the Windows Forms (WinForms) environment to programmers who have some experience with .NET programming, and in the process (thanks to a clear and deliberate expository style) reveals a lot about .NET to less experienced developers. The overall effect is that almost every reader comes away with better knowledge of .NET, not just its user-interface libraries and behaviors.

Author Chris Sells takes care to balance code samples with explanatory text, meaning that most chapters take on a characteristic “code, explanation, effect” style (in which “effect” is usually documented with a screen shot). This approach is effective, and serves both to answer “How do I…” questions and inspire “I should give that a try!” exploration. Once in a while, callouts will link two or more screen shots with a sample of code, graphically illustrating how code affects the appearance of a form and how it’s represented in the Visual Studio development environment. On top of his clear teaching style, Sells calls attention to workarounds for shortcomings in the .NET environment (particularly where similar limitations don’t exist in Microsoft Foundation Classes), helping to improve programmer productivity in the growing .NET environment. –David Wall

Topics covered: How to use the WinForms environment within the Microsoft .NET Framework. Dialog boxes, drawing, printing, and controls all are covered by means of explanations and lots of illustrative examples, and there’s good coverage of the WinForms event model, too. An appendix compares MFC and the .NET Framework.

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Wasn’t helpful for me - nothing about design and weak coverage of components.
I’m a Java programmer who finished reading O’Reilly’s “Programming C#” (very good book), and wanted to get started in Windows Forms programming. Chapters 1 and 2 were decent and Appendix B was an excellent introduction to Delegates and Events.

The rest of the book, however, was very weak. All it did was give a brief summary of some of the windows forms components (and the coverage was very weak). If you want to learn about a component you are going to have to look it up it on MSDN.

I was hoping the book would give me something other than what I can get by looking at an API. I was really hoping there would at least be a few chapters on how to design Windows Forms applications - there was nothing. The easy part is learning how to use a component. The difficult part is learning best practices about design an application - something this book didn’t touch.

Also, I’m not sure how the rest of the books in the “Microsoft .NET Development Series” are, but I think it’s very cheap and dishonest to make a book ‘appear’ weighty. The book is 680 pages, but the margins, line spacing, and text are all very large. This book easily could have been half its size.

5 Stars Excellent Book
Very good book! Windows Programmer must have.

Easy to follow.

5 Stars Very readable coverage of very relevant material
I got this book after having already done quite a bit of WinForms programming and found it a compelling read. I’d have read after a platform/language primer but before doing any actual WinForms work, had I had it in my possession at that time.

Its the first programming book in some time that I read as a ‘page turner’ - it’s that well-written (in prose terms).

It’s also very well copy-edited, which shows that a lot of effort went into getting the book just right, which can’t be said for all books (I guess the gap between release of .NET 1.0&1.1 and this book allowed for that more than in other books).

As for the relevance of the information, I believe it to be very relevant to a wide variety of application types, regardless of that being the main criticism I see in other reviews here. I guess that comes from the fact that you can’t please all the people all the time. Still, I’d venture it comes as close as any other book is going to come.

For me it’s very near the top of the must-have books if you’re going to be writing non-trivial production WinForms apps.

One thing to be aware of is that the .NET 2.0 version is on the way in the coming months, making it Essential unless you’re not in a position to use 2.0 stuff.

5 Stars The second edition is out the covers Windows forms V2, you may want to buy it instead.

The second edition is out that covers Windows forms V2, you may want to buy it instead.

1 Star Would have written my own review, but…
“…I had hoped it would be a convenient and quick reference to such questions as “how do I use FolderBrowserDialog and/or OpenFileDialog to open a file in my C# program?” but although these standard components are indexed in the book the discussion of them in the book is shorter than this review I am writing. What I would want is some kind of sample code, maybe a step-by-step description of how to add the components to my program…”

There’s no way I could have said it better. The book seems to want to cover “everything” but actually manages to say “nothing”.

The only part in which I would have to disagree with the previous reviewer is his rating. He gave it three stars. I think it deserves one.

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