Where Are We?

As this chapter has shown, Windows Forms provides a great deal of functionality. Not only does it give you the basic elements needed to build applications, forms, controls, resources, and dialogs, but it also provides advanced features such as anchoring, docking, user controls, print preview, data binding, and web deployment. Guiding you along the way are a slew of wizards and the Windows Forms Designer, the main vehicle for visually developing the look and feel of your application. Where Windows Forms stops, the rest of the .NET Framework steps in to provide drawing, object serialization, threading, security, and tons of other bits of functionality in thousands of classes and components. One book can't cover all of those, but I'll show you what you need to know to write real Windows Forms applications and controls in the rest of this one.