“Some books are different-the content can't be Googled from the Internet, the authors have real-life experiences to share, the code can be used in real-world projects. This is one of those books.”

–Neal Myrddin, Independent Developer

“Chris and Michael nail the soul of Windows Forms 2.0. This book provides an insightful view into the design of Windows Forms and the integration of new 2.0 features. It is just as applicable for the first-time Windows Forms programmer as the seasoned line of business developer. The ‘What’s New in 2.0’ appendix is worth the price of admission alone.”

–Mike Harsh, Windows Forms Program Manager, Microsoft, Inc.

“This book takes an amazingly broad and deep technology, and breaks it into manageable pieces that are easily consumed. You cannot survive building a complex WinForms application without this book.”

–Ryan Dorrell, Chief Technology Officer, AgileThought

“Windows Forms 2.0 Programming offers something for every .NET developer. Experienced developers will appreciate the in-depth coverage of new 2.0 features, including the most comprehensive coverage of ClickOnce deployment, multithreading, and the new designer integration found anywhere. Developers new to Winforms programming will appreciate the coverage of the fundamentals all Winforms developers need to know. Whether you’re an experienced WinForms developer or just beginning, you need this book.” 

–Fritz Onion, cofounder of Pluralsight, author of Essential ASP.NET, and ASP.NET MVP

“I don’t want just a description of the WinForms widgets. I can get that online or from other books. What I want is a roadmap for pitfalls to avoid, and innovative solutions for common problems. That is where this book shines. All of us who found the first edition of this book to be an indispensible part of our reference library will appreciate this updated edition that describes WinForms 2.0.”

–Johan Ericsson, Software Engineer, Agilent Technologies

“The books Chris Sells writes are always insightful and this newest addition is no different. This book in particular is for those who want to understand not just the flashy surface of Windows Forms 2.0, but also how it fits into the .NET environment. Readers will have this book at their desks, not stuck on their shelves, for quite a long time.”

–Yoshimatsu Fumiaki, Software Engineer based in Tokyo Japan

“Chris and Mike have done an excellent job presenting the information you need to be successful with Windows Forms.”

–Jessica Fosler, Dev Tech Lead, Microsoft

“This book is the ‘must have’ teaching and reference book for WinForms 2.0.”

–Jim Rittenhouse, Senior Software Engineer, Siemens

Windows Forms 2.0 Programming is the successor to the highly praised Windows Forms Programming in C#. This edition has been significantly updated to amalgamate the sheer mass of new and improved support that is encompassed by Windows Forms 2.0, the .NET Framework 2.0, and Visual Studio 2005. This is the one book developers need in order to learn how to build and deploy leading-edge Windows Forms 2.0 applications.

Readers will gain a deep understanding from Sells and Weinhardt’s practical, well-balanced approach to the subject and clear code samples.

  •  Windows Forms 2.0 fundamentals, including forms, dialogs, data validation, help, controls, components, and rendering

  •  Static and dynamic layout, snap lines, HTML-style flow and table layout, automatic resizing, and automatic cross-DPI scaling

  •  Office 2003-style tool strip control coverage, including dynamic layout and custom rendering

  •  Design-time integration with the Visual Studio 2005 Properties Window and Smart Tags

  •  Resource management, strongly typed resources, and internationalization considerations

  •  Strongly typed application and user settings

  •  SDI, MDI, Single Instancing, Multiple-Instance SDI, Single-Instance MDI, database-centric, and document-centric applications

  •  Databinding data-source management, drag-and-drop databinding, the BindingSource, the BindingNavigator, and applied databinding

  •  Events, delegates, multithreaded UIs, long-running operations, simplified multithreading with the BackgroundWorker, and asynchronous web service calls

  •  ClickOnce application development publishing, shell integration, and partial trust security

  •  Best practices for developers transitioning from Windows Forms 1.0 and MFC

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 27 Ratings

Terrific book which is still highly useful - 2007-04-27
Reviewer Rating:
Windows Presentation Foundation has been released and we will all immediately stop doing WinForms development and move to the latest and greatest technology. Right. WPF may take over the world -- but not right now. Plenty of folks will still be doing Windows Forms development for some time. Ergo, this book is a great resource to have on the shelf.

The writing style's clean, clear, and concise, and the examples all show the right level of detail. Graphics throughout the book are good, and there's even a full-color section in the middle of the book to show off how nice various WinForms displays can look. (Although I should note some of the figures there aren't particularly interesting.) A very handy "New" marker in the margins highlights features and functionality new to the .NET 2.0 framework -- a great benefit for folks experienced in 1.1 development who are looking for quick exposure to what's new in 2.0.

The book's content is terrific and extremely useful. There's a solid introduction which hits all the important fundamentals of WinForms development and also hits the right features you'll need in Visual Studio. There's awfully good coverage on basics such as form lifecycle, MDI basics, data validation, and why/how properties are important in WinForms development.

The authors do a very solid job laying out other important concepts like data binding and validation. There's also a great amount of background on localization through the entire book, and I found the chapter on resources particularly informative. The bits on components and custom controls were also a very good read.

Overall it's a solid book and very useful for folks still working in WinForms development.

Awesome Book - 2009-11-06
Reviewer Rating:
I really love your wonderful book, Windows Forms 2.0 Programming in C#. It is so well-written and full of very relevant user-interface tricks and tips and I am also impressed with the way it is organized. I first found out about your book through the MSDN webpage when I was looking for how to implement a document-centric user interface in C#. And I happened upon the series of articles entitled "Creating Document-Centric Applications with Windows Forms," and I enjoyed those so much I bought the book.

I am currently using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and managed to, with your code and tips and tricks plus some third-party libraries I found off the internet, I have produced a Visual Studio-clone for Java. I love programming in C# and .NET. It's too easy.

I am also a prolific programming author myself. You may have heard of me. At one point you could type my name into the Visual C++ 6 Help Search and articles would pop up if you had MSDN installed. I've also published several tens of articles in Visual C++ Developer magazine and on The Code Project.

Thanks again for the great book!

great - 2009-10-06
Reviewer Rating:
Do not buy "training Kit" from Microsoft unless you are a genius or you are already familiar with the subject. They are not for the new kids on the block.
Instead by the Step by Step books or this one Microsoft.Net Development Series.
This book is discriptive and great. A+ for this book.

An excellent "go to" resource for WinForms development - 2008-06-10
Reviewer Rating:
After many years of scientific programming using C++ and MFC, I was looking for a book to help make the transition to application development using C#. The authors' treatment of fundamental concepts like dialogs, printing and background worker threads, complete with descriptive examples, continues to make this book extremely useful as a reference in new projects, and when porting legacy code to Windows Forms.

Appendices that deal with the differences between MFC and Windows Forms, as well as a C# implementation of document management will be of particular interest to MFC programmers.

This is a highly recommended addition to any .NET programmer's library.

Excellent book - honors the reader's intelligence - 2008-04-15
Reviewer Rating:
I am not a collector of C# books, although I have reviewed many tens of them before settling on two. Chris Sells' Windows Forms programming is one of them (Jesse Liberty's Programming C# is the other).

Chris does not hand-hold the reader through tediously simple explainations; as other reviewers have mentioned this is not the book to buy if you want photos of which button to click at every step. Instead he provides good high and medium level explanation of every common problem/situation I've encountered with Windows Forms programming (and many more), and backs that up with sample code. That means this is not an attempt to write a comprehensive encyclical, but is enough to solve most problems, and when not, let's one intelligently Google the necessary question.

So far, I've only had one Winforms question that his book could not answer, which dealt with comparing Winforms 2.0 to a new Windows Presentation Foundation version released after the book's publication. Chris answered my question personally the same day I asked him...that's pretty amazing.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Programming

Sub-Categories:
Programming > Windows