Net Developer Series

Windows Forms and Custom Controls

By: Matthew MacDonald

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Paperback | 9 July 2002

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628 Pages

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22.86 x 17.78 x 3.81

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This book represents the start of the second wave of .NET books: closely focused works that give you the insight of experienced developers about a single aspect of .NET programming. In .NET User Interfaces with VB .NET, you'll take a close look at all the ingredients you can use to design state-of-the-art application interfaces. You'll also delve into entirely new topics like custom control design and GDI+, the next-generation painting framework for Windows. You won't just learn about anchoring and docking, you'll work with complete examples that show document-view architectures, custom control layout engines, dockable windows, and hit testing with owner-drawn controls. You'll also learn how to design irregularly shaped forms, unshackle data binding, and build integrated help systems. You'll find that this book fills three roles. It provides the following: - An overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand. This is addressed directly in the first chapter, and indirectly in tips and asides throughout the book. - A comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in .NET. Although this book is not a reference, it contains an exhaustive tour of almost every user interface element you'll want to use, including providers, components, and custom controls. - A tutorial with best practices and design tips for coding user interfaces and integrating help. This represents overall focus, and the single most important aspect of the book. As a developer, you need to know more than how to add a control to a window. You also need to know how to create an entire user interface framework that's scalable, flexible, and reusable.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Computing & I.T.Operating Systems Computer Programming & Software Development Object-Oriented Programming or OOP Web Programming Software Engineering Programming & Scripting Languages Microsoft Programming Computer Hardware Personal Computers

Preface	p. xvii
About the Author	p. xix
About the Technical Reviewer	p. xxi
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
Introduction	p. xxv
About This Book	p. xxv
Chapter Overview	p. xxviii
Creating Usable Interfaces	p. 1
Why Worry About the Interface?	p. 2
A Brief History of User Interfaces	p. 3
The Command-Line Era	p. 3
The Question-Answer Model	p. 5
The Menu-Driven Model	p. 7
The GUI Era	p. 8
Creativity vs. Convention	p. 9
Consistency in .NET	p. 10
The "Act-Like-Microsoft" Principle	p. 11
Administrative Utilities	p. 11
Know Your Application Type	p. 13
Know Your User	p. 13
Handling Complexity	p. 14
Segmenting Information	p. 15
Inductive User Interface	p. 16
Helpful Restrictions	p. 16
Restricting the User's Ability to Make a Mistake	p. 16
Restricting the User's Choices	p. 17
Restricting the User's Imagination	p. 18
Programming User Interface for the Web	p. 19
The Last Word	p. 19
Designing with Classes and Tiers	p. 21
Classes and Objects	p. 22
The Roles of Classes	p. 22
Classes and Types	p. 23
More About Objects	p. 26
User Interface Classes in .NET	p. 26
Controls Are Classes	p. 27
Controls Contain Other Controls	p. 28
Controls Derive from Other Controls	p. 30
Inheritance and the Form Class	p. 32
The Controls Collection	p. 34
Generating Code with Visual Studio .NET	p. 35
Interacting with a Control	p. 37
The View-Mediator Pattern	p. 37
Smart Controls	p. 39
Smart Forms	p. 40
Encapsulation	p. 41
Use Enumerations and Resource Classes	p. 42
Use Collections	p. 42
Restrain from Sharing Control References	p. 42
Define a Data Transfer Plan	p. 42
Use a Central Switchboard	p. 43
Create Data-Driven User Interfaces	p. 43
Developing in Tiers	p. 44
Problems with Three-Tier Design	p. 45
Three-Tier Design Consistency	p. 47
Fixing Three-Tier Design	p. 48
The DataSet to the Rescue	p. 50
Validation and Business Objects	p. 51
Other Types of Application	p. 51
The Last Word	p. 52
Control Class Basics	p. 55
The Windows Forms Package	p. 55
The .NET Solution	p. 56
The Control Class	p. 58
Position and Size	p. 62
Color	p. 64
Fonts and Text	p. 67
Access Keys	p. 68
Control Relations	p. 69
Focus and the Tab Sequence	p. 70
Responding to the Mouse and Keyboard	p. 73
A Mouse/Keyboard Example	p. 76
Mouse Cursors	p. 76
Graphics and Painting	p. 78
Low-Level Members	p. 79
The Last Word	p. 80
Classic Controls	p. 81
Types of Controls	p. 81
Invisible Controls	p. 81
Provider Controls	p. 83
ActiveX Controls	p. 84
Should You Import ActiveX Controls?	p. 86
The Classic Control Gallery	p. 88
Labels	p. 88
LinkLabel	p. 89
Button	p. 91
TextBox	p. 92
CheckBox and RadioButton	p. 94
PictureBox	p. 94
List Controls	p. 95
Other Domain Controls	p. 99
Organizational Controls	p. 102
The Date Controls	p. 102
The DateTimePicker	p. 103
MonthCalendar	p. 106
Menus	p. 108
The Menu Class	p. 110
The MainMenu and ContextMenu Classes	p. 111
The MenuItem Class	p. 112
The Visual Studio .NET Menu Designer	p. 114
Attaching a Menu	p. 116
Menu Events	p. 117
Copying and Cloning a Menu	p. 118
Merging a Menu	p. 118
Owner-Drawn Menus	p. 119
An Owner-Drawn Menu Control	p. 122
Drag-and-Drop	p. 126
"Fake" Drag-and-Drop	p. 126
Authentic Drag-and-Drop	p. 128
Validation	p. 131
A Validation Example	p. 133
Validating with the ErrorProvider	p. 134
Validating with Regular Expressions	p. 136
The Last Word	p. 138
Forms	p. 139
The Form Class	p. 139
Form Size and Position	p. 144
Scrollable Forms	p. 148
Showing a Form	p. 149
Custom Dialog Windows	p. 150
IgnoreForm Interaction	p. 153
Form Ownership	p. 156
Windows XP Styles	p. 158
Prebuilt Dialogs	p. 160
Resizable Forms	p. 165
The Problem of Size	p. 165
A Traditional Solution	p. 166
Minimum and Maximum Size	p. 169
Anchoring	p. 170
Docking	p. 174
Splitting Windows	p. 176
Docking with Panels	p. 177
Other Split Windows	p. 179
Irregularly Shaped Forms	p. 183
Shaped Form Content	p. 185
Moving Shaped Forms	p. 187
Forms with Holes	p. 189
Visual Inheritance	p. 190
Making an Ancestor Control Available	p. 192
Adding an Ancestor Property	p. 192
Overriding an Event Handler	p. 193
The Last Word	p. 195
Modern Controls	p. 197
The ImageList	p. 197
Dealing with the ImageList in Code	p. 199
ListView and TreeView	p. 201
Basic ListView	p. 202
Advanced ListView Tricks	p. 208
Label Editing	p. 212
Adding Information to a ListView	p. 213
Basic TreeView	p. 213
TreeView Structure	p. 214
TreeView Navigation	p. 216
Manipulating Nodes	p. 219
Selecting Nodes	p. 222
Advanced TreeView Tricks	p. 224
Node Pictures	p. 225
Expanding and Collapsing Levels	p. 226
TreeView Drag-and-Drop	p. 227
Taming the TreeView	p. 231
A Project Tree	p. 231
A Data-Aware TreeView	p. 233
Unusual Trees	p. 235
Design-Time Support for the Custom TreeView	p. 236
The ToolBar	p. 237
Synchronizing the ToolBar	p. 241
The StatusBar	p. 245
Basic StatusBar	p. 246
Synchronizing the StatusBar to a Menu	p. 248
The TabControl	p. 250
The NotifyIcon	p. 252
The Last Word	p. 253
Custom Controls	p. 255
Types of Custom Controls	p. 256
User Controls	p. 256
Creating User Controls	p. 257
The Progress User Control	p. 259
The Bitmap Thumbnail Viewer	p. 264
Testing the BitmapViewer	p. 270
BitmapViewer Events	p. 270
BitmapViewer Enhancements and Threading	p. 272
Inherited Controls	p. 275
Inherited Controls or User Controls?	p. 276
The DirectoryTree Control	p. 276
Testing the DirectoryTree	p. 279
A Masked TextBox Control	p. 280
Custom Extender Providers	p. 283
The Menu Text Provider	p. 284
The Help Icon Provider	p. 288
The Last Word	p. 291
Design-Time Support for Custom Controls	p. 293
Control Projects	p. 294
The Class Library Project	p. 294
Referencing a Custom Control	p. 296
The GAC	p. 298
Control Designer Basics	p. 300
Attributes	p. 300
Basic Serialization	p. 305
The Toolbox Bitmap	p. 306
Resource Files	p. 308
Testing Custom Controls	p. 312
Debugging Design-Time Support	p. 313
Testing for Design Mode	p. 314
The PropertyGrid Control	p. 315
Custom Designers	p. 316
Filtering Properties and Events	p. 318
Designer Verbs	p. 319
Control Designer Notifications	p. 325
Data Types and UITypeEditors	p. 326
Using Prebuilt UITypeEditors	p. 328
Custom UITypeEditors	p. 330
Licensing Custom Controls	p. 332
Simple LIC File Licensing	p. 332
Custom LIC File Licensing	p. 334
Advanced License Providers	p. 334
The Last Word	p. 337
Data Controls	p. 339
Introducing Data Binding	p. 339
Basic Data Binding	p. 340
Simple List Binding	p. 342
Binding Lists to Complex Objects	p. 343
Single-Value Binding	p. 346
ADO.NET Data Binding	p. 349
Multiple Control Binding	p. 353
Updating with Data Binding	p. 354
Formatting Data Before Binding	p. 356
Advanced Conversions	p. 359
Row Validation and Changes	p. 362
Data Binding Exposed	p. 363
Navigation with Data Binding	p. 364
Reacting to Record Navigation	p. 366
Creating Master-Detail Forms	p. 367
Creating a New Binding Context	p. 369
The DataGrid Control	p. 370
DataGrid Relations	p. 371
DataGrid Column Mapping	p. 372
Creating Custom DataGrid Column Styles	p. 373
Encapsulation with Data Controls	p. 377
Validating Bound Data	p. 378
Data-Aware Controls	p. 380
A Decoupled TreeView with Just-in-Time Nodes	p. 382
Can There Be a Data-Bound ListView Control?	p. 387
The Last Word	p. 387
MDI Interfaces and Workspaces	p. 389
The Story of MDI	p. 389
Types of MDI Applications	p. 390
MDI Essentials	p. 390
Finding Your Relatives	p. 392
Synchronizing MDI Children	p. 393
MDI Layout	p. 395
Merging Menus	p. 396
Managing Interface State	p. 399
Document-View Architecture	p. 401
A Document-View Ordering Program	p. 402
Floating Windows and Docking	p. 415
Floating Toolbars	p. 415
Dockable Windows	p. 418
The Last Word	p. 424
Dynamic User Interface	p. 425
The Case for Dynamic User Interface	p. 425
Creating Controls at Runtime	p. 426
A System Tray Application	p. 428
Using Controls in a Drawing Program	p. 432
Dynamic Content	p. 438
Localization	p. 439
A Dynamic Menu Example	p. 442
Data-Driven Programming	p. 446
A Data-Driven Pricing Application	p. 446
Control Layout Engines	p. 448
The SingleLineFlow Layout Manager	p. 449
Control Layout Engines As Extender Providers	p. 452
The Last Word	p. 452
GDI+ Basics	p. 455
Paint Sessions with GDI+	p. 456
Accessing the Graphics Object	p. 456
Painting and Refreshing	p. 457
Optimizing GDI+ Painting	p. 460
Painting and Resizing	p. 460
Painting Portions of a Window	p. 462
Rendering Mode and Antialiasing	p. 465
Double Buffering	p. 467
Painting and Debugging	p. 470
The Graphics Class	p. 471
Coordinate Systems and Transformations	p. 476
Pens	p. 479
Brushes	p. 482
Hit Testing	p. 485
Hit Testing Nonrectangular Shapes	p. 487
The ControlPaint Class	p. 488
The Last Word	p. 490
GDI+ Controls	p. 491
Simple GDI+ Controls	p. 491
A Gradient Label	p. 492
Improving the GradientLabel's Design-Time Support	p. 495
A Marquee Label	p. 498
Creating Button Controls	p. 501
A Hot Tracking Button	p. 502
Reconsidering the Vector Drawing Program	p. 507
Solving the Bounding Problem	p. 508
A Simple Graphing Control	p. 513
The Last Word	p. 517
Help and Application-Embedded Support	p. 519
The Case for Help	p. 519
Types of Help	p. 520
WinHelp	p. 520
WinHelp 95	p. 521
HTML Help	p. 522
MS Help 2	p. 524
Some Help Authoring Tools	p. 525
Classic Bad Help	p. 526
Basic Help with the HelpProvider	p. 527
Control-Based and Form-Based Help	p. 531
Invoking Help Programmatically	p. 532
Help Without the HelpProvider	p. 533
Using Database-Based Help	p. 534
Using Task-Based Help	p. 535
Creating Your Own Help	p. 537
Application-Embedded Support	p. 539
Affordances	p. 540
Agents	p. 541
The Last Word	p. 547
Index	p. 549
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Net Developer Series

Windows Forms and Custom Controls

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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