Rating:  - Wasn't helpful for me - nothing about design and weak coverage of components.
I'm a Java programmer who finished reading O'Reilly's "Programming C#" (very good book), and wanted to get started in Windows Forms programming. Chapters 1 and 2 were decent and Appendix B was an excellent introduction to Delegates and Events.
The rest of the book, however, was very weak. All it did was give a brief summary of some of the windows forms components (and the coverage was very weak). If you want to learn about a component you are going to have to look it up it on MSDN.
I was hoping the book would give me something other than what I can get by looking at an API. I was really hoping there would at least be a few chapters on how to design Windows Forms applications - there was nothing. The easy part is learning how to use a component. The difficult part is learning best practices about design an application - something this book didn't touch.
Also, I'm not sure how the rest of the books in the "Microsoft .NET Development Series" are, but I think it's very cheap and dishonest to make a book 'appear' weighty. The book is 680 pages, but the margins, line spacing, and text are all very large. This book easily could have been half its size.
Rating:  - The second edition is out the covers Windows forms V2, you may want to buy it instead.
The second edition is out that covers Windows forms V2, you may want to buy it instead.
Rating: - Very readable coverage of very relevant material
I got this book after having already done quite a bit of WinForms programming and found it a compelling read. I'd have read after a platform/language primer but before doing any actual WinForms work, had I had it in my possession at that time.
Its the first programming book in some time that I read as a 'page turner' - it's that well-written (in prose terms).
It's also very well copy-edited, which shows that a lot of effort went into getting the book just right, which can't be said for all books (I guess the gap between release of .NET 1.0&1.1 and this book allowed for that more than in other books).
As for the relevance of the information, I believe it to be very relevant to a wide variety of application types, regardless of that being the main criticism I see in other reviews here. I guess that comes from the fact that you can't please all the people all the time. Still, I'd venture it comes as close as any other book is going to come.
For me it's very near the top of the must-have books if you're going to be writing non-trivial production WinForms apps.
One thing to be aware of is that the .NET 2.0 version is on the way in the coming months, making it Essential unless you're not in a position to use 2.0 stuff.
Rating:  - Would have written my own review, but...
"...I had hoped it would be a convenient and quick reference to such questions as "how do I use FolderBrowserDialog and/or OpenFileDialog to open a file in my C# program?" but although these standard components are indexed in the book the discussion of them in the book is shorter than this review I am writing. What I would want is some kind of sample code, maybe a step-by-step description of how to add the components to my program..."
There's no way I could have said it better. The book seems to want to cover "everything" but actually manages to say "nothing".
The only part in which I would have to disagree with the previous reviewer is his rating. He gave it three stars. I think it deserves one.
Rating: - Excellent Book
Very good book! Windows Programmer must have.
Easy to follow.
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