Press Release
March 24, 2003
Building a Richer User Interface for Windows: O'Reilly Releases ".NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell"
Sebastopol, CA--"Despite the advent of web services, there's still
plenty of demand for standalone Windows applications, and plenty of
developers who build nothing else. At least half of these developers
are expected to move to Microsoft's .NET platform this year, and when
they do," says Ian Griffiths, coauthor of .NET Windows Forms in a
Nutshell (Griffiths and Adams, O'Reilly, US $44.95). "They'll discover
a simpler and cleaner programming model for creating graphic user
interfaces much richer than anything they've built in the past."
".NET Windows Forms are the best technology for building a large class
of applications for the Windows platform today," Griffiths says. "They
offer almost the same power and flexibility of classic Win32
development, but for a fraction of the effort. A whole load of tedious
details that developers used to have to deal with day in and day out
are now dealt with automatically by the platform."
".NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell" offers an accelerated introduction
to this new user interface development tool, with plenty of advice and
practical information. Along with a compact yet complete reference to
the .NET Framework Class Library (FCL) Windows Forms namespaces and
types, the book explains the rationale behind the new forms design and
.NET in general. "Understanding the thinking behind the framework
enhances your productivity substantially," Griffiths explains. "It
enables you to guess correctly what 'the right way' to do things is the
majority of the time, even if you have never tried to do it before. No
more digging around in documentation for days trying to find
information you need for using one particular feature."
".NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell" provides coverage of the fundamental
building blocks, such as Controls, Forms, Menus, and GDI+, and helps
developers build their own fully featured reusable visual components,
so they can write visual component libraries as well as applications.
Included is a CD for integrating the book's reference section directly
into the help files of Visual Studio .NET.
As the book points out, .NET Windows Forms employs many new Microsoft
technologies, including a common application framework, managed
execution environment, integrated security, and object-oriented design
using the new C# and Visual Basic .NET programming languages.
Microsoft's GDI+ allows developers to create richer, more complex
graphics. "GDI+ is the most significant leap forward we've seen in
ages," Griffiths says. "We're approaching the point where computers can
have the same quality of presentation expected in television and print
media."
The book will appeal to anyone who develops non-web rich client
applications for Windows, even those with little or no specific
knowledge of .NET. Developers who currently write intranet-based web
applications for the enterprise should be interested as well. "Because
Windows Forms is a rich client technology--as opposed to thin
client--they can present an application that takes full advantage of
the user's machine, rather than being restricted to what can be done in
a web browser," Griffiths says. "Web technologies have traditionally
offered much easier deployment models, but .NET offers technology that
can bring this flexibility and control to rich client applications."
Additional Resources:
.NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell
By Ian Griffiths, Matthew Adams
0-596-00338-2, Order Number: 3382
896 pages, $44.95 US, $69.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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