Customer Reviews

Developing .NET Custom Controls and Designers Using C#

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been developing custom controls in C# for 3 months now after developing custom Java controls for years. I must say initially that this book was not much help. If you need a real beginner book that holds your hand step by step buy Petzold. However, after delving into the intricacies of Windows Forms you'll definitely find this book useful. The OutlookTab example in this book invaluable. It's a real world example and the author tackles some of the more advanced development topics. I agree with other reviewers that this book is not as clear as you would hope. Also you will definitely still need to read the MSDN docs and probably look at the some disassembly to get a good grasp of developing your own custom controls.

Covers every aspect a serious control developer needs to know. I especially liked the detailed coverage of how to include designers and resources with web controls. Light on fluff, heavy on code. Author also helped me with complex problems via e-mail. Can't beat that!

I bought this book based on the comments from another reviewer that stated, "For Experts Only". I disagree with that. This book is accessible to beginners and has some beginner content. The print quality looks almost photo-copied and was clearly self published. However, I applaud developers bypassing publishers. At times it presents useful content, but sometimes it reads like MSDN. I recommend that you check out Matthew McDonald's book ( User Interfaces in C#: Windows Forms and Custom Controls ).

This book provides the best coverage on data binding(30 pages) I have yet seen. This chapter alone makes the book a worthy purchase.

I'm only four chapters through this book, and already I am having difficulty. I am an intermediate programmer who has been programming my own custom controls for months with limited success, hence my interest in the title.

One instance of difficulty is that the example given in chapetr 3 doesn't work. When I looked at the author's downloadable sample code and compared it to the code in the book, I found that he implemented 2 other functions not implemented in the book. However, it made no difference at runtime, the code still did not work as intended. Then the author got into UITypeEditors. He introduces terms without fully explaining what they mean (of course, they can easily be looked up on MSDN, but what's the problem with quickly explaining them in a paragraph or two??). He quickly jumps from one topic to another within this section of the chapter and just dumps code on you. So much so, I feel like I just got picked up by a tornado and dropped 15 miles away!

While I look forward to reading the rest of the book to try and get what I can out of it, I agree with other reviewers that you are still going to need to read as much as you can from the MSDN (what little there is there) as well as other sources that may be available on the web, and of course, you're going to have to tinker around to really learn anything substantial. However, having said that, this is only one of two books devoted to custom control development (the other being .Net Windows Forms Custom Controls by Richard L. Weeks, which is better in my opinion, but still not the greatest.).

The long and short of it is, anything at all is a help, but you're going to have to read other sources and just plain old play with code on your own. Apparently, there does not exist one comprehensive book that will get you on your way. Yes boys and girls, there will be homework tonight, and a lot of it, so happy reading. And your final project is due YESTERDAY!

***

I finished reading this book. It only took two days! The author stopped trying to write after the second chapter!! This book is horrible. If you want a paperback version of the MSDN, then this book is for you, otherwise, don't waste your time or money on it.

This book is full of typos and is not well structured. In the few chapters which were well written, I usually found that the material in the chapter merely whetted my appetite for more actual details (as opposed to more enumeration of properties and methods).

On the other hand, I haven't seen _any_ other book attempt to tackle advanced design-time issues like this book does, and it's nice to see the similarities between Windows Forms and Web Forms designers.

Content and topics covered in the book are good, especially
a lot pages talking on designer. But it lacks small and complete examples like presented in other books that help to understand. Finally it presented an big example that has too many codes to read.

This book rocks!!! I've just purchased the ebook version, and I must say that after spending several days searching through bookstores and the web, this has got to be the most insightful book on reusable control development on the market (In the .NET Arena!!!).

As this book covers all elements of control development, I can definitely advise any developer looking to deliver professional user controls that this book is a must have.

Well done to the author for bypassing the publishers. It's about time developers had immediate access to downloadable versions of the books after purchase.

As a reader from the UK, I must point out that this title was not available via the Amazon.co.uk web site, but that's another matter

This has to be the worst book I have ever bought. Poor explaining & a lot of errors in the code.