Programming Microsoft® Windows® with C#

Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.I bought Petzold, "Programming Windows with C#" and Pappas & Murray, "C# for Windows Programming" at roughly the same time. Petzold's book is long and thorough. It took me about 6 days of working through the book, but when I was done (in April), I had what I needed to write a small (~10000 lines, 1/2 of it GUI code out of the Visual Studio .NET GUI editor) commercial application that just hit the shelves two weeks ago (in July). In addition to a thorough introduction to Windows Forms programming, the book introduced readers to a variety of other .NET framework classes that I actually ended up using. Information was accurate (with a few exceptions due to changes between the betas and the final .NET code) and well organized. Petzold was careful to warn readers about techniques that might look appealing but would cause trouble later, and explained why they might cause trouble.So now that I can breath again, I thought I'd work through the Pappas & Murray book. What a joke. These guys must have been working under an unrealistic deadline, because I've never seen a book padded with so much fluff and so little usable content. At least two of the examples won't work as published, the descriptions of the event handlers are 23 pages of repetitive cut and paste that could have been cut down to 5 pages with a little thought, enumeration values for three or four MessageBox parameters were munged together in one table so that you couldn't tell which values to use with which parameters, and so on and so on. Code was sloppy - techniques they used that worked for their small examples would be dangerous if used generally in larger programs. This book is worse than just "beginner", it will lead beginners wrong.I won with Petzold's book, and lost with Pappas & Murry's. Fortunately I read Petzold's when it counted.

I don't see why some reviewers of this book continually state that this book is a C# book. I'm talking both good reviews and bad reviews here. Unfortunately, many people see remarks about what a great C# book it is, purchase the book, find out it contains exactly 40 pages of C# information and then return here to slam the book. It's unfair to the author and unfair to customers.Let's talk about what this book IS. This book is the very best book on the market for writing Windows applications in C#. The author focuses on the IO, Drawing and Windows Forms namespaces and types and in the end produces the best book of its kind currently available. The key to remember when deciding on this book is that there's a reason that both Tom Archer and Charles Petzold write for MS Press. Mr Archer focuses on C# and Mr Petzold on what to do once you've learned the language. A hint might also be gathered via the fact that this site sells both as a combination deal!In summary, I own both books (as well as Jeffrey Richter's fine internals book) and rarely am ever at a loss for answers in my .NET development (something I do 10 hours a day).

Petzold is a literate writer who effectively uses information (and anecdotal material) from the history of Windows programming, and the broader history of computer programming, to put his technical examples in a rich context.I find his exposition of C# grounded in practical problem-solving with .Net's Forms and Controls extremely useful. The kinds of problems he poses and solves (with source code in the text and on the accompanying cd) are the types of problems that I face creating user interfaces and interacting with Windows system services.The book is, as other reviewers commented, focused purely on client-side issues, but I disagree with another reviewer who felt it didn't cover COM : He does mention and show examples of using the InterOp facilities, and, I believe, that since .Net is designed to replace both COM and ActiveX, this is very appropriate. There are a lot of other resources for COM and COM+.For myself I would rather learn a language bottom-up through studying and using concrete code examples that accomplish real-world tasks than read abstract books on the structure of the language, etc. Perhaps if you are a "top-down" learner who prefers to start with a very formal language definition and Backus-Naur diagrams and then implement some algorithms, and then, finally, get around to implementing the algorithm in a specific OS environment, this may not be the right book for you to start with on .Net.I have other books by Troelsen, Gunnerson, and Liberty, and they are useful also, but Petzold's book is the one I keep coming back to and re-reading over and over.The clear technical writing style that Petzold has achieved is, imho, very rare these days. I have the wonderful sense reading the book that I am sitting across a table from a wise friend who is gently and patiently guiding me forward through a complex technical subject.

This is one of the most carefully constructed books on programming that I've ever read. The book builds a doggedly focused exposition of .NET Windows Forms from the ground up, and within that subject, there is very little missing here. Further, any diversions are relegated to three superbly organized appendices on Files and Streams, math functions, and string handling, three areas which rich client windows programmers have to have good mastery of anyhow. When I say that Petzold builds his subject from the ground up, I mean that the book can and should be read like "War and Peace, " from beginning to end without skipping anything. Even if you think you understand the basics, I'd be very surprised if you didn't gain important insights you might have missed before, even from the early and elementary chapters. Virtually nothing is presupposed and your knowledge is build up, block by block. After studying this book, you will understand exactly what is happening in a .NET Windows Forms application. Other books take a shotgun approach, throwing stuff at you that may work, but without providing the background to understand what is happening beneath the sheets. Petzold does not let Visual C# generate code automatically. Visual Studio provides a lot of visual tools and wizards for quickly designing dialog box layouts and generating code frameworks, but Petzold wants you to understand what is really going on, so everything is hand-coded in this book. This can either be a warning to you, or an invitation to those who want a deep understanding of how a Windows Form is really put together. I'd say, do it Petzold's way first, and after you've mastered the foundations of Windows Forms, use the visual tools to save time when your now superior perspective can do so without running the risk of not understanding something the visual tools did that isn't quite working right and you don't have the depth of understanding to quickly zero in on the cause. There is virtually nothing in this book that is not focused on .NET Windows Forms using C#. Mercifully, VB.NET isn't even mentioned. Also, you won't find diversionary chapters on ADO.NET or ASP.NET. The book treats Windows Forms basics (from the classic "Hello, World", through essential data structures and basic text output), and then alternates the chapters between topics on graphics (GDI+) and user interface elements (mouse, keyboard, timers, buttons, menus, toolbars, etc.). GDI+ is an enhancement to the old GDI and the book contains uncompromising chapters on such graphical topics as Bezier curves and other splines, including all the necessary mathematical background. In the chapter on Pages and Transforms, he presents* all the mathematical background necessary to perform the linear transformations needed to utilize the GDI+ graphical transforms. This is what I mean about uncompromising. He doesn't avoid topics in the .NET Windows Forms classes because they might require a little college algebra that most of us have

This book is for neither .NET/C# programming language nor Windows Operating System. It focuses on Windows GUI programming. It only spends about 40 pages on C# language basics, and also, it never mentions COM/COM+, which are very important features for Windows platform. This is the best reference book for windows forms and .Net GDI+ programming. It spends 1200+ pages to introduce all those Graphic and UI stuff in a C# way. If you are a UI programmer, this book is nothing but a must buy! It includes everything you need to know about .NET/C# GUI programming. But, if what you are looking for is some C# language reference, please refer to C# Primer: A Practical Approach by Stanley B. Lippman or Progamming C#. If what you want is a detail look into .NET platform/CLR, refer to Compiling for the .NET Common Language Runtime.