How This Book Is Structured

Part I of this book is a tutorial describing the fundamental concepts and classes in the Windows Forms API. It consists of the following 10 chapters:

Chapter 1, .NET and Windows Forms Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the .NET Framework (focusing on the parts that are relevant to Windows Forms developers) and the Windows Forms API.

Chapter 2, Controls

The Control class is at the heart of every Windows Forms application. Its role and usage are examined in detail in this chapter.

Chapter 3, Forms, Containers, and Applications

Forms are top-level windows, and almost all Windows Forms applications use Forms (hence the name). We examine Forms in their role as containers for controls. The chapter also discusses how form-based applications are constructed.

Chapter 4, Menus and Toolbars

Most nontrivial applications use menus and toolbars to present their functionality in a structured way. This chapter shows the relationship between menus, forms, and controls. It also describes the techniques for dynamically modifying menus in MDI applications.

Chapter 5, Building Controls

This chapter shows the techniques for building your own reusable user interface components. It describes both user controls (collections of other controls grouped into a reusable element) and custom controls, which give developers complete control over all aspects of the control's appearance and behavior.

Chapter 6, Inheritance and Reuse

The .NET type system's support for inheritance is fundamental to the way in which controls work. Chapter 6 describes the role of inheritance in Windows Forms applications. It also highlights the many pitfalls of misuse of inheritance.

Chapter 7, Redrawing and GDI+

Although GDI+ is not strictly a part of Windows Forms, this powerful drawing API gives you the ability to control the appearance of your programs. Chapter 7 describes how to use GDI+ in your Windows Forms applications.

Chapter 8, Property Grids

The Property Grid control is important for two reasons. First, it is a very useful control for presenting and editing information. Second, it is a central part of Visual Studio .NET, and understanding its use is crucial to integrating your controls with the development environment. This chapter offers thorough coverage of the Property Grid control.

Chapter 9, Controls and the IDE

This chapter describes how to build controls that integrate into the Visual Studio .NET Forms Designer. It shows how to build custom control designers and extender property providers.

Chapter 10, Data Binding

Windows Forms has a data-binding architecture that allows any data source to be bound to any property of a control. Chapter 10 describes how to configure these bindings and how to use the specialized data source class, the DataSet.

Throughout Part I, code examples are given in both C# and Visual Basic .NET.

Part II of this book is the quick reference. It covers the basic Windows Forms namespace, System.Windows.Forms, and the GDI+ namespaces, System.Drawing, System.Drawing.Drawing2D, System.Drawing.Imaging, and System.Drawing.Printing. It also describes the design-time namespaces, System.ComponentModel and System.Windows.Forms.Design. Throughout Part II, C# syntax is used to document types and their members. In addition to the core namespace documentation, Chapter 11 discusses how to use the quick reference, while Chapter 12 shows VB.NET programmers how to convert the reference section's C# syntax to VB.NET syntax.