Written by: Erik Brown
Pages: 752
Publisher: Manning
ISBN: 1932394656

 

 

 

 

WinForms made easy

Windows Forms In Action, written by Erik Brown, is a book targeted to developers that want to program User Interfaces for Windows applications using the .NET framework. The book is targeted to beginners and, in general, to developers who face WinForms for the first time. Experienced programmers will skip many of the contents presented in the book; but still find in it a good reference for implementing common tasks. I've reviewed the second edition of the book - the first one was entitled "Windows Forms Programming with C#" - which contains updated content as well as new material.

The book

The book is organized in three parts. The first part guides the reader through some very basic concepts of the .NET framework and the Visual Studio IDE. It provides also a quick overview of the concepts and tasks that the developer will master during the reading. Starting from the second part, Brown covers the majority of controls provided by Windows Forms. The second part aims at describing the basic elements of a User Interface; such as input controls, menus, dialog boxes, tabs, and so on. The third part covers complex controls such as the ListView and the TreeView. In this part, the author dives into some complex programming scenarios, such as Custom Controls and Multiple Document Interfaces (MDI).

Now that we've overviewed the contents, let me spend some words about how the book is written; and the tools Brown leverages to make this book a nice learning experience.

Regarding the code; the approach took by the author is to develop a sample application that spans the whole book. The result is a complete program for browsing photographs and creating and managing albums. In the first part, we learn about the overall structure of the application and its specifications. In the second part, we add the basic controls to the application's interface. In the third part, we leverage databinding techniques and even transform the application to take advantage of MDI.

The learning power of a real-world example is accompanied by the nice writing style. Brown ensures that everything is clear and convincing before diving into the next topic. Sometimes he takes the time to explain the same concept in two or three different ways. This approach might result boring for the experienced programmer; and yet it's pure learning joy for the beginner.

Another thing that will make readers happy is the great amount of walkthroughs the book provides. Walkthroughs are organized into tables. Each row explains a particular step towards the task completion. The book is literally full of these tutorials, each one addressing a particular task. The walkthroughs are also great as reference material. When you need to revise how a particular task is performed (what's the best way to handle a modal dialog? How do I perform custom drawing of ListView items?), just pick up the book and search for the corresponding walkthrough.

Conclusion

I've enjoyed the second edition of this book. If you're going to develop with Windows Form, this book is a great learning resource. If you're already into WinForms, you can use the book as a reference during the everyday programming. Four stars out of five.

About Alessandro Gallo

Alessandro "Garbin" Gallo is a Microsoft MVP in the Visual ASP/ASP.NET category and a .NET developer/consultant. He is a contributor for the Ajax Control Toolkit project, owned by Microsoft. Alessandro won the Grand Prize at the "Mash-it-up with ASP.NET AJAX" contest held by Micr... This author has published 23 articles on DotNetSlackers. View other articles or the complete profile here.

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Discussion

Subject	Author	Date
Nice review Garbin	Granville Barnett	9/6/2007 9:19 AM
I read the first edition of this and couldn't really choose anything between that and Chris Sells Windows Forms 2.0 Programming. I think this book is slightly better than Sell's in that it is a more walkthrough approach, but then Sell's book is more a reference (I think anyway!). Reply | Permanent link

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