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preface
In early 2001 I began using Microsoft’s .NET Framework for a project I was working
on with a small startup company. Unfortunately, the winds changed and I found
myself with more free time than I would normally hope for. So when Manning Pub-
lications asked me if I would contribute to a book on programming with the .NET
Framework, I welcomed the idea.
As events unfolded, I found myself with some fairly strong opinions about how
such a book should be organized, and offered up a proposal to write a solo book on
programming Windows Forms applications. I have always enjoyed the book Program-
ming Windows 95 with MFC by Jeff Prosise, so a book about developing Windows-
based applications with the .NET Framework seemed like an obvious subject.
The core idea behind my proposal was to build a single application over the course
of the book. The application would evolve to introduce each topic, so that by the end
of the manuscript readers would have a robust application they had built from scratch.
Manning Publications seemed to like the idea as well, and thus I suddenly found
myself writing this book.
In approaching the task, I set out to achieve two objectives. The first was to provide
ample coverage of most of the classes in the namespace. I have been frustrated by many
books that do not provide robust examples for a topic. So I try to provide detailed
examples that demonstrate how Windows Forms classes can be used and manipulated
in real applications.
A second objective was to present advanced user interface topics such as tree views
and drag and drop. While the book spends a good deal of time on fundamental classes,
such as menus and buttons, more than a cursory glance is given to some of the more
complex controls available for Windows-based programming.
The result of my proposal, these objectives, and a number of late nights is the book
you see before you. I take a tutorial approach to application development by creating
a common application throughout the book, and provide summaries of relevant
classes and other topics that might be of further interest. Hopefully, this approach pro-
vides enough detail to demonstrate how Windows-based applications are put together
with the .NET Framework, and yet offers additional information that should prove
helpful as you develop and expand your own .NET projects.
