Beginning Visual C 2005

Karli Watson
Christian Nagel
Jacob Hammer Pedersen
Jon D. Reid
Morgan Skinner
Eric White

Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
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Indianapolis, IN 46256
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Copyright 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-7847-2
ISBN-10: 0-7645-7847-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Beginning Visual C# 2005 / Karli Watson ... [et al.].
p. cm.
Updated ed. of: Beginning Visual C#. 2003.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-7847-2 (paper/website)
ISBN-10: 0-7645-7847-2 (paper/website)
1. C# (Computer program language) 2. Microsoft .NET Framework. I. Watson, Karli. II. Beginning Visual C#. QA76.73.C154B483 2005
005.13'3--dc22

2005010692

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Credits

Acquisitions Editor
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for donna

—Karli Watson

I'd like to dedicate my portion of this book to my wife, Beth, and our children Nathaniel, Timothy, and Walter. Thanks for your support and encouragement. Also a big thank you to my co-authors and the team at Wrox/Wiley.

—Jon Reid

About the Authors

Karli Watson is the technical director of 3form (www.3form.net), as well as a freelance IT specialist, author, developer, and consultant. For the most part, he immerses himself in .NET (in particular C#) and has written numerous books in the field for several publishers. He specializes in communicating complex ideas in a way that is accessible to anyone with a passion to learn, and spends much of his time playing with new technology to find new things to teach people about.

During those (seemingly few) times where he isn't doing the above, Karli will probably be wishing he was hurtling down a mountain on a snowboard. Or possibly trying to get his novel published. Either way, you'll know him by his brightly colored clothes.

Christian Nagel is a software architect, trainer, and consultant, and an associate of Thinktecture, offering training and coaching based on Microsoft .NET technologies. His achievements in the developer community have earned him a position as Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for Visual C#. He enjoys an excellent reputation as an author of several .NET books, such as Professional C#, Pro .NET Network Programming and C# Web Services, and he speaks regularly at international industry conferences.

Christian looks back on more than 15 years of experience as a developer and software architect. He started his computing career on PDP 11 and VAX/VMS, covering a variety of languages and platforms. Since 2000 he has been working with .NET and C#, developing and architecting distributed solutions.

http://www.christiannagel.com
http://www.thinktecture.com

Jacob Hammer Pedersen is a systems developer at Fujitsu Service, Denmark. He's been programming the PC since the early 90s using languages such as Pascal, Visual Basic, C/C++, and in later years C#. Jacob is an MCSD who works almost exclusively on the Microsoft platform where his expertise includes .NET, COM, COM+/Enterprise Services, SQL Server, and MS Office development. A Danish citizen, he works and lives in Aarhus, Denmark.

Jon D. Reid is the President and Chief Technology Officer for Savitar Corporation, an independent software vendor and consulting company that develops database tools for the Microsoft.NET environment. He has co-authored many .NET books, including Pro Visual Studio .NET, Fast Track to C# Programming, ADO.NET Programmer's Reference, and Professional SQL Server 2000 XML. Jon would like to thank his family, co-authors, and the team at Wrox for their support and encouragement.

Morgan Skinner began his computing career at a tender age on a Sinclair ZX80 at school, where he was underwhelmed by some code a teacher had written and so began programming in assembly language. After getting hooked on Z80 (which he believes is far better than those paltry 3 registers on the 6502), he graduated through the school's ZX81s to his own ZX Spectrum.

Since then he's used all sorts of languages and platforms, including VAX Macro Assembler, Pascal, Modula2, Smalltalk, X86 assembly language, PowerBuilder, C/C++, VB, and currently C#. He's been programming in .NET since the PDC release in 2000, and liked it so much, he joined Microsoft in 2001. He now works in Premier Support for Developers and spends most of his time assisting customers with C#.

You can reach Morgan at http://www.morganskinner.com.

Eric White is an independent software consultant with over 20 years experience in building management information systems and accounting systems. When he isn't hunched over a screen programming in C#, he will most likely be found with an ice axe in hand, climbing some mountain.