User Interfaces in VB. NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls 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 User Interfaces in VB. NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls, you'll know how to design state-of-the-art application interfaces, program graphics, and much more.
This book contains the following:
An overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand
A comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in .NET
Best practices and design tips for coding user interfaces and integrating help
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 controlsyou'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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Great book
I'm a fairly new programmer in vb.net(finished vb.net II) and I found this book to be VERY good. Yes it is very theory intensive but the examples it gives are fairly straight forward and if you aren't the world's best programmer they show you how to make controls to make some really slick looking programs.
There are a few .net 1.0 examples that will not work in the new 1.1 (notably the xp theme visualizations) but this book is well worth it if you are interested in making some "professional" ... Read More
Rating: - Easy to follow and sufficiently detailed
For someone who has already used other languages for GUI design, this is a great book to get quickly up to speed in the .Net view of Windows forms. It didn't cover everything in enough detail for me but good enough to get me started. I would of liked more on data grid (how about a whole book on it as it's complex enough) and context menus but I eventually figured it out on my own. I could go for an advanced version of this book too.
Rating: - Comprehensive Guidelines on .NET Controls
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Approach with caution
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Great book, just what you need to know
It is interesting to compare this book to the one by Petzold which I also regard as a "must buy" - but for different reasons. Macdonald's book is much more manageable than Petzold but still seemed to contain everything I wanted to know about Windows forms.
Petzold on the other hand is roughly twice as long and thus far more complete. Petzold is also perhaps a slightly more interesting writer than MacDonald - but then I am not sure everybody needs the details provided by Petzold...
- Great book
- Easy to follow and sufficiently detailed
