Pro .NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls in C#

Renowned author Matthew MacDonald combines careful treatment of the API with detailed user-interface design principles. Further, this book incorporates C# and the final beta of .NET 2.0. The result: thorough coverage of Windows Forms and GDI+ namespaces for .NET programmers! You will become equipped to design state-of-the-art Windows interfaces and program graphics, and learn how to create your own controls.

As a developer, you must know more than just how to add a control to a window. You must be able to create an entire user interface framework that's scalable, flexible, and reusable. This book is not a reference manual. Instead, it contains detailed discussions about user interface elements that you’ll use on a regular basis.

Customer Reviews:

The controls and nothing but

By Rick Curry - February 20, 2006

Don't buy this book if you need to learn ADO.NET, file access, the common language runtime, or any other "starter" .NET topic. This book isn't a general introduction to writing a Windows application. (If you want that, read Jesse Liberty's fairly good "Programming .NET Windows Applications" instead.)

This book is a drill-down, no-holds-barred, VERY comprehensive look at programming advanced WinForms interfaces. It gives the full details on every control, complete with great advice for customizing and extending them. (Custom controls are a major theme in this book.) There's excellent content here that just can't be found in the MSDN, like tips for using layout engines, mixing web and windows contet, and multithreading an interface. This book was written with support from Microsoft's Windows Forms team, and it shows--the content on many subjects is several degrees more comprehensive that any I've seen before.

All in all, this is a stand-out choice for professional... read more

Nice Look At Custom Controls

By Dan McKinnon - August 1, 2006

Pro .NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls in C# by Matthew MacDonald provides a nice introduction (well more than that with a book that is ~1000 pages long) to controls in the .NET 2.0 world.

Since noone else has provided a chapter listing, I will do so:

01. UI Architecture

02. Control Basics

03. Forms

04. Classic Controls

05. Images and Resources

06. Lists & Trees

07. Drawing with GDI+

08. Data Binding

09. Custom Controls Basics

10. User Controls

11. Derived Controls

12. Owner-Drawn Controls

13. Design-Time Support for Custom Controls

14. Tool, Menu, Status Strips

15. DataGridView

16. Sound & Video

17. WebBrowser control

18. Validation & Masked Editing

19. Multiple and Single Document Interfaces

20. Multithreading

21. Dynamic Interfaces... read more

Excellent Windows Forms and Custom Controls Coverage

By T. Anderson - February 26, 2006

This book covers everything you need to know about Windows Forms and Custom Controls. It is very thorough and well written.

The code samples work well and are well organized.

It doesn't cover the smart client gamut, like data storage, communication, or architecture in context to smart client applications. Which is ok. No book currently out covers smart client properly, but windows forms are the front end to smart clients so it would have been nice to have them placed into the smart client context.

And just to clear up the review below. Turn to page 94 for all the classic common dialogs. Mathew didn't miss anything in this book. Relate to Windows Forms UI development.

He also emphasizes using proper UI architecture and getting business logic out of the UI and develops his samples accordingly.