Windows Forms in Action

841 Pages·2006·13.09 MB·English

by  Erik Brown

Windows Forms in Action

Windows Forms
in Action

Second Edition of
Windows Forms Programming with C#
ERIK BROWN
MANNING
Greenwich
(74° w. long.)
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Manning Publications Co. Copyeditor: Liz Welch
209 Bruce Park Avenue Typesetter: Dottie Marsico
Greenwich, CT 06830 Cover designer: Leslie Haimes
ISBN 1932394-65-6
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – VHG – 10 09 08 07 06
In memory of Thelma Rose Wilson,
and for her beautiful daughter, whom I still love

brief contents
Part 1 Hello Windows Forms 1
1 Getting started with Windows Forms 3
2 Getting started with Visual Studio 33
Part 2 Basic Windows Forms 63
3 Menus 67
4 Context menu and status strips 92
5 Reusable libraries 116
6 Files and common dialog boxes 148
7 Dialog boxes 180
8 Text boxes 212
9 Buttons 240
10 Handling user input and encryption 268
11 List boxes 299
12 Combo boxes 327
13 Tab controls and pages 356
14 Dates, calendars, and progress bars 383
15 Bells and whistles 415
16 Tool strips 443
vii
Part 3 Advanced Windows Forms 475
17 Custom controls 477
18 Explorer interfaces and tree views 507
19 List views 541
20 Multiple document interfaces 575
21 Data binding 608
22 Two-way binding and binding sources 637
23 Odds and ends .NET 665
appendix A C# primer 701
appendix B .NET namespaces 735
appendix C Visual index 741
appendix D For more information 758
viii
contents
preface xix
preface to the first edition xxi
acknowledgments xxiii
about this book xxv
what’s new in 2.0 xxxiii
about the cover illustration xxxv
Part 1 Hello Windows Forms 1
1 Getting started with Windows Forms 3
1.1 Programming in C# 4
Namespaces and classes 6 ✦ Constructors and methods 8
C# types 8 ✦ The Main method 11 ✦ The Application
class 12 ✦ Program execution 13
1.2 Windows Forms controls 14
The using directive 15 ✦ The Control class 17
The Controls property 18
1.3 Loading files 19
Events 21 ✦ The OpenFileDialog class 23 ✦ Bitmap
images 26
1.4 Resizing forms 26
The Anchor property 29 ✦ The Dock property 30
1.5 Recap 32
2 Getting started with Visual Studio 33
2.1 Programming with Visual Studio 34
Creating a project 35 ✦ Executing a program 37
Viewing the source code 38
ix