Programming Microsoft Windows Forms is a great introduction into windows forms. It takes the magic out of windows programming by showing how to do everything from scratch, which, with windows forms, turns out to be pretty easy.

I haven't programmed for windows since MFC, COM, and Visual Studio 6 were considered new. Windows forms makes a lot of the tasks that used to be tedious easy and Petzold as always is very easy to follow.

Although this book is not an introduction into C#, it is easy to pick up assuming you already know some other languages like C++ or Java. I didn't know any C# before I started reading this book and already feel comfortable with it.

One thing to note is that this book covers .NET 2.0 and the current version (as of April 2008) is .NET 3.5. However, I haven't had any problems compiling the example code using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

This book is a good updated to his first book on programming forms in C# 1.1. There have been alot of useful changes from C# 1.1 to 2.0. I just wish he would rewrite the first book with the 2.0 updates instead.

This book is, as the author explains, done in Petzold style. Meaning it is shown with the code behind the GUI tools instead of being done with the tools. Unfortunately any forms which are built with code cannot then be manipulated with the GUI tools which defeats the intention of the makers of Visual Studio as a Rapid Application Developement (RAD) tool.

If all you have however is the compiler and a text editor then this book is for you but since Visual C# is freely available you can write some nifty applications without needing to know how to invoke the compiler from the command line.

Still, there are some things in this book which are helpful to know and the GUI tools, on occasion, don't exactly fit the bill. So it's nice to know what the code behind the GUI is doing but you'll soon be forgetting most of what you learn because you'll be using the GUI tools.

I would much rather have had a book which shows how to use the GUI tools more effectively than what the code does.

Edwin E. Smith
Freehold Consulting
Coffeyville, KS

This book is, as the author explains, done in Petzold style. Meaning it is shown with the code behind the GUI tools instead of being done with the tools. Unfortunately any forms which are built with code cannot then be manipulated with the GUI tools which defeats the intention of the makers of Visual Studio as a Rapid Application Developement (RAD) tool.

If all you have however is the compiler and a text editor then this book is for you but since Visual C# is freely available you can write some nifty applications without needing to know how to invoke the compiler from the command line.

Still, there are some things in this book which are helpful to know and the GUI tools, on occasion, don't exactly fit the bill. So it's nice to know what the code behind the GUI is doing but you'll soon be forgetting most of what you learn because you'll be using the GUI tools.

I would much rather have had a book which shows how to use the GUI tools more effectively than what the code does.

Edwin E. Smith
Freehold Consulting
Coffeyville, KS

I wanted to do some windows programming in C#, bougt a lot of books but found this the only one that really helped.

This is hands down the most clearly-written explanation of programing windows forms using C# that I have read or seen on the market. Petzold has an easy and engaging writing style. He takes the time to explain the WHAT and the WHY of what you are doing. This is a great book for someone just sitting down to Visual Studio 2005 to begin learning C# programming. His examples and walkthroughs produce useful and functioning examples of the most common aspects of Win Form programming. My only complaint is that he can only dedicate a chapter to some pretty key concepts, like data-binding. My interest is piqued, and then the chapter ends and we move on to new concepts. This is a small complaint because what he does provide is complete and enlightening. It provides a solid foundation to build off of create your own experiments.

I have worked through many programming books over the years (or should I say attempted to). The Step-by-Step guides always leave me wanting more answers about how things work, in addition to how to make it work, and seem to be pretty superficial. This book has left me anxious to read more of Petzold's work. He has skillfully broken through my thick head and can do the same for you.

The Microsoft .NET program continues to expand with each release of Windows. In the .NET Framework 2.0, introduced in the fall of 2005 significant enhancements were made. These enable the programmer to implement Windows applications that are both powerful and sharp looking with considerably less effort than before. This book is somewhat of a quick introduction to writing such applications taking advantage of the new features.

The author's previous book 'Programming Microsoft Windows with C#' is about three times as long as this one and is basically written using a somewhat lower level of coding as was required before the new enhancements. It may well be that you want to purchase that book as a second volume to this one.

This book uses Microsoft's C# programming language for its demonstrations. A brief introduction to the C# language is included in the book, enough that C++ and Java programmers should have no problems in following the examples. There is no CD published with the book, instead a web site is maintained with code samples, updates, and a list of known errors.

This book is a rather 'quick and dirty' introduction to Windows Forms, it is an excellent introduction to getting something going. By the time the reader gets through the two real applications in the back of the book he should be ready to tackle the kinds of things for which Windows Forms was created.