Windows Forms here I come

posted Tuesday, June 14, 2005 11:13 PM

For the past 5+ years I’ve been doing web related work.  Over the year or two I’ve had a desire to find an opportunity that would allow me to get into the WinForms world.  That opportunity has just recently presented itself.  It’s going to be fun to learn the world of WinForms.  Does anyone have any must have book recommendations for a web guy moving over to WinForms?  Is this (Windows Forms Programming in C#) all I need?  What other must have WinForms books are out there?

5 Comments

# re: Windows Forms here I come

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 3:26 AM by Dennis van der Stelt    
Dunnow about books, but after years of web, it's really great returning to winforms. Being statefull rocked my world for a change! ;)

In the past, I decided to go to web because of the graphics possible there. I know a lot is possible in Winforms as well, but it's more natural to build just gray applications. But currently I like both very much.

Still I mostly do web applications just because "they deploy easier".

Can't wait until ClickOnce is officially supported by clients.

# re: Windows Forms here I come

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 7:11 AM by Hendrik Swanepoel    
I'm in exactly the same boat as you, seems like I'm going to start doing some serious windows dev at last.

Everybody recommended that particular book to me, so it's first on my list. Other than that I don't know.

# re: Windows Forms here I come

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 8:58 AM by Dave Burke    
My 2-cents is to forget the books. They're 1.1 anyway. Dive into 2.0. I've been checking out every 2.0 webcast I can get my hands on and am basing a lot of my approach on the DevDays IssueVision app. See my winforms section for more. The biggest thing I've found is planning the data architecture. I'll be blogging more on that aspect of my experience. Speaking of which, I better get to it...

# re: Windows Forms here I come

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:04 AM by Steve    
I haven't determined if we're going to be able to go to 2.0 yet. I'm hopefull that we will as it seems like a lot of nice functionality has been added in 2.0 that helps make things less painful in the WinForms world. I was checking out the IssueVision app last night as an example application. I'll be interested in hearing your (Dave) experiences in planning the data architecture!

# re: Windows Forms here I come

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 11:20 AM by Dave Burke    
I'll be looking forward to YOURS!

After weeks, I've finally turned the corner and am banging away at the app. Back to "more typing and less thinking," rather than that painful "more thinking and less typing" period of deliberating and mulling data architectural issues.

I first considered going with 2.0, then went back to 1.1. Quickly on I reversed back to 2.0 and have NO RESERVATIONS about doing so. With Click-once and the new features of 2.0 to increase Winforms development productivity, there's no comparison. Especially if its a NEW project, 2.0 should be the way to go.

I'm keeping IssueVision open in a VS.NET 1.1 session and my 2.0 app in a VS.NET 2.0 session. Very good stuff in 1.1, though 2.0 replaces much of it.

Consider DIVElements controls. Winform 2.0 controls are still lame in comparison, and you need to dazzle in the UI, after all.

Post a Comment

 
 
Prove you're not a spammer: 
6 + 6 =