User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls (Paperback)

by Matthew MacDonald (Author)
Key Phrases: new rectangle, new font, dynamic user interface, Private Sub, Visual Studio, Public Class (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
<p><i>User Interfaces in VB. NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls</i> goes beyond simple coverage of the Windows Forms and GDI+ namespaces by combining a careful treatment of the API with a detailed discussion of good user-interface design principles. After reading <i>User Interfaces in VB. NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls</i>, you'll know how to design state-of-the-art application interfaces, program graphics, and much more. </p> This book contains the following: <ul> <li>An overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand <li>A comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in .NET <li> Best practices and design tips for coding user interfaces and integrating help </ul> <p> Although this book isn't a reference, it does contain detailed discussions about every user interface element you'll use on a regular basis. But you won't just learn how to use .NET controls&emdash;you'll learn how and why to extend them with your own custom controls. As a developer, you need to know more than how to add a control to a window. You also need to know how to create an entire user interface framework that's scalable, flexible, and reusable. </p>

About the Author
Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as <i>Inside Visual Basic</i>, <i>ASPToday</i>, and <i>Hardcore Visual Studio .NET</i>, and he’s the author of several books about programming with .NET, including <i>User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls</i>, <i>The Book of VB .NET</i>, and <i>.NET Distributed Applications</i>. In a dimly remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail to him with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to <a href="mailto:[e-mail]"> [e-mail]</a>.

Product Details

• Paperback: 580 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st edition (July 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590590449
• ISBN-13: 978-1590590447
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #282,592 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I was looking for, July 27, 2002

By	Mark (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews

I have bought a whole bunch of books about VB.NET only to find that they all gloss over Windows Forms and don't teach you very much about making rich Windows client applications with this very capable language. This book gives in-depth coverage of all of the major Windows Forms controls and lots of good advice for how to use them to present good user interfaces as well a comprehensive chapters on user and custom controls. I highly recommend it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Approach with caution, April 8, 2003

By	John Harpur (Trim, Meath, IRELAND) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is about the details of form building. It is not about the details of backending a form to a database or website. It has a very specific remit and if you are not an experienced VB.Net programmer you could be badly caught out here. This is not a book to cut your UI building teeth on. There are introductory texts to do that. It is also not a UI design book. So don't expect lashings of advice on usability theory, design and test. They are just not here.

The focus on the book is on form controls creation and the various arcana in .Net that support them. Many interesting and useful topics are raised in the book (there is an overlap between some of these and the coverage in other books, e.g. MDi and GDI+). However, the extent to which they will generalise for the 'average' programmer is another question. I am not convinced that the book has sufficent novel content over an above other more general texts of the market.

Unless you specifically need detail about form controls, form splitters, personalised system trays etc, this book may be overkill. A good deal of topics in the book is covered in Deitel and Deitel (and more besides),and Balena. So if you are learning VB.Net be careful in your choice.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Guidelines on .NET Controls, May 6, 2003

By	Amjad (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

I found this book to be excellent. It isn't 100% comprehensive, but it is full of real, practical code and suggestions for using controls. It's the only book I've found that dealt with the treeview, listview, and imagelist in enough detail. Particularly noteworthy are the descriptions on how to create custom controls based on these controls that have built-in application meaning. For example, the book explains how to create a treeview that has a hard-coded "structure" and exposes custom methods for adding/navigating your type of data. Similar advice is given with validation, drag-and-drop, form inheritance, MDI workspaces, and data binding strategies. Basically, the book is a solid guide to mastering .NET controls. Note that this book isn't the best place to learn GDI+. Although there are two excellent chapters on the subject and the basic charting control, both Apress and Wrox provide dedicated GDI+ books that focus more closely on custom drawing.

Probably the best example in the book is the document-view architecture with the print preview--simple, elegant, and worth the trouble. Overall, high-content, well-written and genuinely **USEFUL**!