Programming Microsoft® Windows® Forms (Pro Developer) [Paperback]

Charles Petzold (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0735621535 | ISBN-13: 978-0735621534 | Publication Date: November 30, 2005 | Edition: 2005 ed.

Whether you’re a new or experienced developer, get the focused information you need to streamline application development using Windows Forms and Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. Award-winning author Charles Petzold illuminates the essential concepts and techniques for exploiting Windows Forms capabilities—offering concise, eloquent instruction as always, along with ample code examples in C#.

Discover how to:

• Understand the architecture of Windows Forms programs
• Add familiar Windows controls to your application, such as buttons, scroll bars, and text boxes
• Create toolbars, menus, and status bars, complete with text and bitmap images
• Enhance existing controls, combine multiple controls, or create custom controls from scratch
• Exploit dynamic layout with FlowLayoutPanel
• Support absolute, proportional, or auto-sized columns and rows with TableLayoutPanel
• Develop data-bound controls
• Display tabular data with the new DataGridView control—without writing extensive code
• PLUS—Build and deploy two real-world Windows Forms applications from the bottom up

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Written by programming legend Charles Petzold, this book offers a practical, streamlined, and hands-on approach focused on expediting developer productivity with new forms and utilities for Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and Microsoft Visual C#® 2005.

Key Book Benefits:

• Delivers straightforward, need-to-know information about Windows Forms, with no diversions into minutiae

• Demonstrates skills that will be critical in future Windows development environments, including the Windows code-named "Longhorn" operating system and its "Avalon" graphical interface

• Features quick, hands-on programming guidance covering controls, panels, tables, and other key topics

• Written by Charles Petzold, author of the classic "Programming Windows" (Microsoft Press)

About the Author

Charles Petzold wrote the classic Programming Windows®, which is currently in its fifth edition and one of the best-known and widely used programming books of all time. He was honored in 1994 with the Windows Pioneer Award, presented by Microsoft® founder Bill Gates and Windows Magazine. He has been programming with Windows since first obtaining a beta Windows 1.0 SDK in the spring of 1985, and he wrote the very first magazine article on Windows programming in 1986. Charles is an MVP for Client Application Development and the author of several other books including Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 2005 ed. edition (November 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735621535
• ISBN-13: 978-0735621534
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #940,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST Introduction to C#, WinForms. and .net 2.0, January 29, 2006

By 

John Harman (Chagrin Falls, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Windows® Forms (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

This is hands down the most clearly-written explanation of programing windows forms using C# that I have read or seen on the market. Petzold has an easy and engaging writing style. He takes the time to explain the WHAT and the WHY of what you are doing. This is a great book for someone just sitting down to Visual Studio 2005 to begin learning C# programming. His examples and walkthroughs produce useful and functioning examples of the most common aspects of Win Form programming. My only complaint is that he can only dedicate a chapter to some pretty key concepts, like data-binding. My interest is piqued, and then the chapter ends and we move on to new concepts. This is a small complaint because what he does provide is complete and enlightening. It provides a solid foundation to build off of create your own experiments.

I have worked through many programming books over the years (or should I say attempted to). The Step-by-Step guides always leave me wanting more answers about how things work, in addition to how to make it work, and seem to be pretty superficial. This book has left me anxious to read more of Petzold's work. He has skillfully broken through my thick head and can do the same for you.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uses the New .NET 2.0 Enhancements for a Quick Start, December 1, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Windows® Forms (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

The Microsoft .NET program continues to expand with each release of Windows. In the .NET Framework 2.0, introduced in the fall of 2005 significant enhancements were made. These enable the programmer to implement Windows applications that are both powerful and sharp looking with considerably less effort than before. This book is somewhat of a quick introduction to writing such applications taking advantage of the new features.

The author's previous book 'Programming Microsoft Windows with C#' is about three times as long as this one and is basically written using a somewhat lower level of coding as was required before the new enhancements. It may well be that you want to purchase that book as a second volume to this one.

This book uses Microsoft's C# programming language for its demonstrations. A brief introduction to the C# language is included in the book, enough that C++ and Java programmers should have no problems in following the examples. There is no CD published with the book, instead a web site is maintained with code samples, updates, and a list of known errors.

This book is a rather 'quick and dirty' introduction to Windows Forms, it is an excellent introduction to getting something going. By the time the reader gets through the two real applications in the back of the book he should be ready to tackle the kinds of things for which Windows Forms was created.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to follow introduction into windows forms, April 13, 2008

By 

Douglas Richardson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Windows® Forms (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

Programming Microsoft Windows Forms is a great introduction into windows forms. It takes the magic out of windows programming by showing how to do everything from scratch, which, with windows forms, turns out to be pretty easy.

I haven't programmed for windows since MFC, COM, and Visual Studio 6 were considered new. Windows forms makes a lot of the tasks that used to be tedious easy and Petzold as always is very easy to follow.

Although this book is not an introduction into C#, it is easy to pick up assuming you already know some other languages like C++ or Java. I didn't know any C# before I started reading this book and already feel comfortable with it.

One thing to note is that this book covers .NET 2.0 and the current version (as of April 2008) is .NET 3.5. However, I haven't had any problems compiling the example code using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.