Synopses & Reviews
For those of you who develop standalone Windows applications for PCs and other devices, Microsoft's .NET Windows Forms provide a much better way to get it done. This new technology gives you more power and flexibility for a fraction of the effort compared to classic Win32 development, with a streamlined programming model that deals automatically with many tedious details that once plagued developers.As with most things .NET, the only hitch is the learning curve. But that's where acclaimed author Jesse Liberty makes the difference with Programming .NET Windows Applications. With this tutorial, you will explore all aspects of using .NET Windows Forms class libraries and the associated programming tools in Visual Studio .NET, enabling you to build applications for the Windows 9x, Windows 2000 and Windows XP desktop platforms. Step-by-step, you'll learn ways to design applications that either function alone on a PC, or work in combination with your web-based application server to take advantage of the richer interface and higher level of security.The book also explains how your new Windows applications can sidestep problems that used to arise from the use of DLLs (known collectively as "DLL hell"), and how .NET Windows Forms can be used as an alternative to ASP.NET and browser-based approaches for building web application clients.Jesse Liberty definitely knows his stuff when it comes to the .NET platform. As the author of O'Reilly's Programming C# and Learning Visual Basic .NET, he's well-known for his clear and concise style that prompted one reviewer to say, "It's as if he knows exactly what questions I'm going to ask ahead of time." Jesse also co-authored Programming ASP.NET with contract programmer Dan Hurwitz, and now the two have teamed up again to bring you this comprehensive tutorial--without a doubt, the best source available for learning how to program with .NET Windows Forms.
Synopsis
From the acclaimed authors of "Programming ASP.NET" comes this comprehensive tutorial on writing Windows applications for Microsoft's .NET platform.
About the Author
Jesse Liberty is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft the best-selling author of O'Reilly Media's Learning ASP.NET with AJAX, Programming C#, Programming .NET 3.5, and a dozen other books on programming. He is on the Silverlight Development Team, and a frequent contributor to O'Reilly Network websites and publications. Jesse is a former Distinguished Software Engineer at AT&T and Vice President for technology development at CitiBank, and was an independent consultant for 12 years.
Dan Hurwitz is the president of Sterling Solutions, Inc., where for nearly two decades he has been providing contract programming and database development to a wide variety of clients.
Table of Contents
Copyright; Preface; About This Book; How the Book Is Organized; Who This Book Is for; Conventions Used in This Book; Version Support; Support: A Note From Jesse Liberty; We'd Like to Hear from You; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Windows Forms and the .NET Framework; 1.1 The .NET Framework; 1.2 Windows Forms; Chapter 2: Getting Started; 2.1 System Requirements; 2.2 Hello World; Chapter 3: Visual Studio .NET; 3.1 Overview; 3.2 Start Page; 3.3 Projects and Solutions; 3.4 The Integrated Development Environment (IDE); 3.5 Building and Running; Chapter 4: Events; 4.1 Publish and Subscribe; 4.2 Performance; 4.3 Some Examples; Chapter 5: Windows Forms; 5.1 Web Applications Versus Windows Applications; 5.2 The Forms Namespace; 5.3 Form Properties; 5.4 Forms Inheritance; 5.5 User Interface Design; Chapter 6: Dialog Boxes; 6.1 Modal Versus Modeless; 6.2 Form Properties; 6.3 DialogResult; 6.4 Termination Buttons; 6.5 Apply Button; 6.6 CommonDialog Classes; Chapter 7: Controls: The Base Class; 7.1 Control Class; Chapter 8: Mouse Interaction; 8.1 SystemInformation Properties; 8.2 Mouse Events; Chapter 9: Text and Fonts; 9.1 Text; 9.2 Fonts; Chapter 10: Drawing and GDI+; 10.1 The Drawing Namespace; 10.2 The Analog Clock Project; Chapter 11: Labels and Buttons; 11.1 Label; 11.2 Button Classes; Chapter 12: Text Controls; 12.1 Text; 12.2 Editable Text Controls: TextBoxBase; 12.3 RichTextBox; Chapter 13: Other Basic Controls; 13.1 Containers; 13.2 Tabbed Pages; 13.3 PictureBox; 13.4 ScrollBar; 13.5 TrackBar; 13.6 Up-Down Controls; 13.7 ProgressBar; Chapter 14: TreeView and ListView; 14.1 Class Hierarchy; 14.2 Splitter; 14.3 TreeView; 14.4 ListView; Chapter 15: List Controls; 15.1 Class Hierarchy; 15.2 ListControls; Chapter 16: Date and Time Controls; 16.1 Class Hierarchy; 16.2 Date and Time Values; 16.3 DateTimePicker; 16.4 MonthCalendar; 16.5 Timer Component; Chapter 17: Custom Controls; 17.1 Specializing an Existing Control; 17.2 Creating a User Control; 17.3 Creating Custom Controls from Scratch; Chapter 18: Menus and Bars; 18.1 Creating Your First Menu; 18.2 The MainMenu Object; 18.3 Toolbars; 18.4 Writing It by Hand; 18.5 Status Bars; Chapter 19: ADO.NET; 19.1 Bug Database: A Windows Application; 19.2 The ADO.NET Object Model; 19.3 Getting Started with ADO.NET; 19.4 Managed Providers; 19.5 Binding Data; 19.6 Data Reader; 19.7 Creating a DataGrid; Chapter 20: Updating ADO.NET; 20.1 Updating with SQL; 20.2 Updating Data with Transactions; 20.3 Updating Data Using DataSets; 20.4 Multiuser Updates; 20.5 Command Builder; Chapter 21: Exceptions and Debugging; 21.1 Bugs Versus Exceptions; 21.2 Exceptions; 21.3 Throwing and Catching Exceptions; 21.4 Bugs; 21.5 Debugging in Visual Studio .NET; 21.6 Assert Yourself; Chapter 22: Configuration and Deployment; 22.1 Class Hierarchy; 22.2 Configuration; 22.3 Assemblies; 22.4 Build Configurations; 22.5 Deployment; Appendix A: Characters and Keys; Colophon;