Customer Reviews

Anonymous said
This is an amazing piece of Literature.
I was fascinated with the complexities of it and was a little perplexed at first. However, I soon discovered that there were hidden codes within the book that would allow me to gain a much better understanding of something. I still have not discovered what that something is.

Bascially, you can take a computer program (hopefully one written with help from this book), and do some simple analysis on non-random codes created from random samples of text created from sequential alpha-numeric capture. I guess its similar to the Bible Codes, only less idiotic or blasphemous.

wuchen5 said
Very good book! Windows Programmer must have.

Easy to follow.

subdigital said
Being primarily an ASP.NET developer, I figured it wasn't too hard to develop a windows forms app, so I started. About 2 weeks into the project (which was going along fairly smoothly) I picked up this book.

I came to 2 conclusions after reading it:
1) I *couldn't* develop windows forms properly before (you tend to think differently when doing 100% web development)
2) now I CAN develop a windows forms app :)

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. His expertise shows through all of the details. There is great detail about GDI, which is one of the biggest things that windows forms have over asp.net, so that was an area I spent a lot of time in.

One of the things I REALLY respect about the book is the fact that he demonstrates the design-time "magic"... but he also gives solid examples of well-structured code -- not always using designer generated code. (This is something I frequently find in books that I cannot stand. Most people just show you the quick & dirty, without emphasis on proper code structure -- Chris Sells gets a thumbs up for not doing this)

All in all the chapters were very informative, it was a good read, and I'd recommend it to anyone building windows forms in .NET 1.1.

I can't wait for his 2.0 book!

Anonymous said
First of all this book is extremely helpful in explaining the short path to mastering Windows Forms especially in the visual design mode.

The author successfully persuades the case that the design-time use of the Windows Forms library is preferred over working in an text editor.

What really made this book indispensable to me was the section on Components. Taking ideas from a Software Architecture course along with what is explained about Components in this book led me to design a series of domain-specific components.

I can now drop and interconnect these components into a form host thereby solving the problems of encapsulating non-presentation code away from the form host. Secondly these components, that contain some of the more challenging aspects of .NET, will allow me to delegate the form design work to less experienced workers.

Without this book I would not have made the leap towards a better and much more productive form of system development.

Finally the book is well-written by any standard. The writing falls within the top standard of any technical or computer book.
The table of contents and index are very useful as well.

Looking forward to the next edition.

david82971 said
I run a very small software development business and transitions in development paradigms are a serious matter for us. I have been working with MFC for many years and I am just starting to re-implement some of our software stock. I decided to take the C# route rather than fudging the MFC version. I have purchased about $1500 of books for my library in the last year. Each transition, I find that there are lots of books that provide endless detail and very little by way of explanation, and if you are lucky there is one that stands out as providing the bridge. In moving to MFC, it was Mike Blaszczak's MFC VC++4 that provided nearly all the rational explanations. During this current move to C#, I have found that it's Chris Sells book that has fulfilled that role. Many thanks Chris.