Windows Forms Programming

Another alternative is to focus on building rich-client Windows applications, using the new Windows Forms technology. Windows applications allow you to take advantage of the full resources of the operating system and yet still distribute aspects of your application over the Web.

A good starting point for more information on building rich-client applications is an article called "Return of the Rich Client" in the June 2002 MSDN Magazine by Jason Clark. You can read this article online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/06/rich/rich.asp.

An excellent source of material on the details of Windows Forms and the underlying technology of building native Windows applications with .NET is Programming Microsoft Windows with C# by Charles Petzold (Microsoft Press). Petzold is the acknowledged master of Windows, and many of us learned Windows programming from his previous excellent book Programming Windows, The Definitive Guide to the Win32 API (Microsoft Press).

I am currently writing the O'Reilly book Programming .NET Windows Applications, again with Dan Hurwitz, to be published in the spring of 2003. Again we are targeting the book at programmers with a working knowledge of C# or VB.NET, as you now have.

Programming .NET Windows Applications will be a comprehensive guide to writing Windows applications that includes extensive coverage of Windows Form controls and event handling. As in Programming ASP.NET, you'll find coverage of advanced programming techniques, error handling, and validation.

The coverage of data handling will be extensive, and we will also provide complete coverage of advanced topics such as custom controls, security, performance, and deployment-related issues.