A Few Words About Windows Forms

When .NET 1.0 was released, way back in February 2002, the hype surrounding the technology was focused on its web-oriented capabilities. However, the inevitable trade-off of walking down the web path was to relinquish the simplified and rich development model provided by Windows Forms 1.0. The capabilities afforded by the new Windows Forms technologywhich leveraged not only the benefits of managed code execution but also the rich library of functionality exposed by the .NET Frameworkcreated a platform for developing more capable Windows Forms applications more quickly than anything that had come before. Even so, the inability to deploy Windows Forms applications with the same ease as web applications has always been a source of consternation for developers, who often need to take the web route to simplify their deployment lives.

With .NET 2.0, we find Windows Forms 2.0 richer still than Windows Forms 1.x. If you've already browsed this book, you'll agree that Windows Forms 2.0 is as far from Windows Forms 1.1 as Whidbey is from Everett.^[1] If you haven't read the book, or if you simply enjoy statistics, here's a breakdown of changes to the System.Windows.Forms namespace, from a purely public implementation perspective:

^[1] The code names for .NET 1.1 (Everett) and .NET 2.0 (Whidbey) come from locations in the Washington state area of the United States of America. The name implies a location that's a certain distance from Redmond (where Microsoft is headquartered), with the proportions of the distance from each other being roughly analogous to the amount of new capability in each successive build.

• 329 new types

• 139 updated types

• 14,323 new members

• 104 new enumerations

• 8 updated enumerations

• 803 new values

This list is impressive, especially when you consider that all the supporting technologies relied on by Windows Forms have gone through as many improvements as Windows Forms itself. The most significant improvements across the board for Windows Forms developers include improved form handling and layout; updated drawing and printing; new and improved components, controls, and design-time integration; significantly simplified resources and settings management; application-focused features; more highly capable data binding; simplified multithreading; and last, but not least, web-quality application deployment.