This product not only enables the reader an opportunity to really come to an understanding of Windows Forms GUI presentation but, also allows the reader to casually explore the more in depth aspects of forms layout and design. The fantastic appeal that this document possesses is simple, atomic, and logical delivery of information in a "small project" styling.

Allot of, what is known as, .Net 2.0 WinForms is carry over to .Net 3.0 & 3.5 and in such this book has yet to become dated. This reason alone is why I decided to purchase Pro .Net Windows Forms... by Apress. I managed to get much more out of this book than what I was expecting and I cannot say that I am unhappy about the fact.

The Mono Framework for Linux and Unix systems almost completely facilitates everything compliant to the .Net Framework 2.0 now so, this book will only serve you well as .Net 2.0 conformant applications developed on Windows will now run right out of the box on Linux against the Mono Framework.

This item is bar none the best literature that I have seen on this topic yet outside of MSDN. I have yet to peruse any Microsoft Press publications on this subject but, that would be my only other suggestion aside from this document and MSDN.

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is coming along nicely but, it is not ready for the hobbiest or casual programmer. Understanding that Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation technologies will be merged indicates that the benefits of understanding good ol' WinForms GUI layout and design procedures are paramount to successfully designing a competent, graphically presented application system.

This book has already paid for itself in just a couple of weeks -- due to the time saved in trying to find the information I need. Every time I have a question regarding an issue in Windows Forms or with Custom & User Controls, I can find it here. Additionally, the content is written in a manner that can be understood by mere mortals, with some good tips and tricks thrown in too.

Highly recommended.

On the merits of this text, I've already purchased Matthew MacDonald's WPF book (the 3.0 one, since I haven't *quite* moved to VS 2008 yet...).

I needed this book for a training course on Windows development in .Net. It helped a great deal to have a good reference that was not the same as the book used in the course. Sometimes I found the examples a little hard to follow because of the distraction of the scenarios shown, but when I boiled them down to what they were meant to present, they were very helpful.

I checked this book out online and only read chapter 20(multithreading). In this chapter the author does an excelent job progressively building your knowledge about .net Threading. I would highly recommend reading this book to anyone wanting to learn about Threading.

The only downfall about this chapter is that it does not talk about some of the more advanced Threading classes such as Monitor and ReaderWriterLock. I would love for this author to do a standalone book just about threading.

I've read quite a few books on Windows Forms applications which include creating custom controls. There are some that are average and there are some that are very good. Usually the average books tend to touch on the simpler aspects of windows forms and forms controls and not go into much detail, which is OK for the novice programmer dabbling in .NET for the first time. However, the more experienced programmers among us want much more. In this respect the very good books tend to be a little over the top for the average user.

This book falls somewhere in the middle for novice and experienced programmers alike, whilst still being rather good. It offers a good discussion on what makes up the underlying architecture of Windows Forms applications which many books lack. The .NET IDE attempts to hide a lot of the nuts and bolts behind the outer layers and generally you shouldn't touch what's under the covers. But occasionally you need to, especially when using visual inheritance because that's when the IDE starts the go a little haywire. By understanding a little about what's happening underneath goes a long way in helping you get out of the mess when the IDE does screw up.

The book covers most of the interesting forms controls .NET 2.0 has to offer and describes them in better detail than what can be found in the relatively useless MSDN on-line help. The code examples given are excellent, concentrating on real-world scenarios. A good portion of the book illustrates how to extend these controls further using custom controls and GDI+ owner drawing to modify the look and feel of these controls.

The book also concentrates on developing 3-tier applications isolating the presentation layer from the business logic and data layers, which is a highly recommended practice for developing scalable applications.

The book doesn't include a CD but all the code examples can be downloaded from the publisher's web site.

Overall I give it 4 out of 5.