Book for a Windows Application

Question

Hello everybody.

I want to create an small GUI Windows application that looks like all the other usual appz.

I am searching for a book that describes the whole procedure. Let's say an address book application that can be have a small database, minimized in the task bar, doing things in the background and so on.

I don't care for the language. But I would prefer to do it in .NET C++.

I know it is a "very" general question, so

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The state of the art in Windows forms application development is WPF. The book WPF Recipes in C# 2008 might be what you're looking for.

Answer 2

Well, if you fancy a tour into Windows API land, I can recommend:

• Zetcode's tutorial. It'll get you started; you'll need to google the rest (like using Common Controls, setting their appearance properly etc).
• In fact, intro tutorials to most languages: http://www.zetcode.com/
• For the non-gui stuff I recommend Windows Via C/C++. This'll get you acquainted with everything non-UI in terms of Win32, such as threads, IPC etc.

If you're using .net, there is of course an excellent forms designer built in that'll do the job. If using java, netbeans has an editor for swing JFrames, although the layout manager requires lots of your favourite programming food&drink to get to grips with.

Answer 3

I suppose if you just want to Windows Forms programming on .NET, almost any book will do. Windows Forms is pretty simple stuff. Draw stuff with the resource editor, hook up your callbacks to the UI elements, and you're done. But you will discover that it is incredibly useful to know how stuff works under the hood - especially when you wonder why your UI froze on some function that takes a long time, or when you want to interoperate with code written in other languages, or call Windows APIs that aren't directly exposed on .NET.

If you really want to learn how Windows UI programming works, the definitive "How to program in Windows" book with an emphasis on UI, is (and will always be):

Programming Windows by Charles Petzold

This book takes you through the low level fundamentals of window creation, window styles, message pumps, graphics, mouse, and some basic system programming. All code examples are in C. Even if you are programming in .NET, knowing what's under the hood of .NET is quite handy. That sad part is that this book was writting in 1998. Very little has changed since then.

If you want to learn Windows System programming, the "the book" is the same one Ninefingers recommends above:

Windows via C/C++ by Jeffrey Richter

Threads, DLLs, files, kernel objects, critical sections, mutexes, semaphores, and other good stuff is covered by Richter's book.

Stay away from books about MFC.

Answer 4

Windows Development link on MSDN acts as a good reference.