Build outstanding user interfaces with .NET: principles, techniques, and code

Nowadays, users and clients demand exceptionally usable software. But few developers are trained to create high-quality user interfaces, and few .NET books offer much help until now.

In Seeing Data, Microsoft MVP Rebecca M. Riordan shows how to use .NET’ s advanced UI tools to build applications that reflect today’ s interface design best practices. She offers visual examples, code, and techniques for every .NET project.

Writing for experienced .NET developers, Riordan introduces core principles of effective interface design including focus, flow, alignment, proximity, contrast, and consistency. She demonstrates how to architect databases for better usability, and how to build more effective form layouts. Next, she systematically tackles user interaction, showing how to:

• Help users navigate DataSets, manipulate data, and generate reports
• Utilize menus, toolbars, buttons, and Help systems
• Enforce data integrity
• Simplify installation and customization

Riordan covers essential technical underpinnings ranging from GDI+ Managed Classes to ADO.NET data binding. She presents dozens of Visual Basic.NET examples all designed for easy, quick reuse, and downloadable from the book’s companion Web site, along with C# equivalents.

Crystal Reports is one of the world s leading software packages for creating interactive reports. It provides developers with an array of tools for developing rich reports that can be published on the Web or integrated within Windows applications. This book provides a detailed guide to the functionality provided with Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET and shows you how to integrate reports into your .NET applications. Who is this book for? This book is for programmers who want a comprehensive guide to the functionality included with Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET. This book is mainly aimed at readers who have some experience with Crystal Reports. However, the book will also prove valuable to readers who are new to Crystal Reports, and want a guide to this reporting tool that is included within Visual Studio .NET. This book will teach you how to: Create reports with the assistance of the Expert Integrate reports into Windowsandreg; and web-based applications Create XML Report Web Services Work with ADO.NET

Use formulas and logic in reports Develop distributed reporting applications Deploy reporting applications

Brilliantly compiled by author Juval Lowy, Programming .NET Components, Second Edition is the consummate introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework–the technology of choice for building components on Windows platforms. From its many lessons, tips, and guidelines, readers will learn how to use the .NET Framework to program reusable, maintainable, and robust components. Following in the footsteps of its best-selling predecessor, Programming .NET Components, Second Edition has been updated to cover .NET 2.0. It remains one of the few practical books available on this topic. This invaluable resource is targeted at anyone who develops complex or enterprise-level applications with the .NET platform–an ever-widening market. In fact, nearly two million Microsoft developers worldwide now work on such systems. Programming .NET Components, Second Edition begins with a look at the fundamentals of component-oriented programming and then progresses from there. It takes the time to carefully examine how components can simplify and add flexibility to complex applications by allowing users to extend their capabilities. Next, the book introduces a variety of .NET essentials, as well as .NET development techniques. Within this discussion on component development, a separate chapter is devoted to each critical development feature, including asynchronous calls, serialization, remoting, security, and more. All the while, hazardous programming pitfalls are pointed out, saving the reader from experiencing them the hard way. A .NET expert and noted authority on component-oriented programming, Lowy uses his unique access to Microsoft technical teams to the best possible advantage, conveying detailed, insider information in easy-to-grasp, activity-filled language. This hands-on approach is designed to allow individuals to learn by doing rather than just reading. Indeed, after digesting Programming .NET Components, Second Edition, readers should be able to start developing .NET components immediately.

This book was written for the many thousands of people involved in designing and writing software for the Microsoft .NET platform. It is chock-full of tips and insights about user-based security, which I like to term “Windows security” because it’s been around in one form or another since Windows NT first shipped. Given the plethora of books that cover the new security features in the .NET Framework, such as code access security and ASP.NET forms authentication, I decided to write a book to help folks with the basics of Windows security, a topic that most other books miss entirely or get subtly or blatantly wrong. This book is in some sense a second edition of my first security book, Programming Windows Security, but I hope that you will find it immensely more approachable and practical. I’ve tried to distill the Zen of these topics into small tidbits of information–items that link to one another–allowing you to read the book in any order that suits you. I hope that you’ll find the format of 75 concise tidbits of information helpful as a reference. The “what is” items focus on explaining concepts, while the “how to” items focus on helping you perform a common task. Within these pages I cover security features in various versions of Windows based on Windows NT. This includes Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Server 2003, but does not include 16-bit Windows or any of the Win9X flavors (Windows 95/98, Windows ME, Windows XP Home Edition). So, when I talk about “Windows” I’m referring to the versions based on Windows NT. Whenever I talk about the file system, I’m assuming that you’re using NTFS, not FAT partitions. Whenever I talk about domains, I’m assuming Windows 2000 or greater. If you’re still living with a Windows NT 4 domain, you have my sincere condolences! Many people have expressed surprise that I occasionally talk about Win32 APIs and refer to Win32 header files in a book for .NET programmers. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but as anyone who has experience with the .NET Framework knows, the framework class library wraps only a fraction of the functionality of the Windows
platform as of this writing. The coverage will get better over time, but to do many things in Windows (including security programming), you often need to call native Win32 APIs. Even as version 2.0 of the framework is being revealed in beta 1, you can see that coverage increasing, but it’s still not complete. In any case, I’ve tried to make it clear in the prose when I’m talking about a Win32 API versus a .NET Framework class, and I’ve provided lots of sample code and helper classes written in Managed C++ that you can leverage to avoid having to call those APIs yourself.

Maximizing .NET Performance is the first book dedicated entirely to providing developers and architects with information on .NET Framework performance. .NET is a technology with a vast surface area, and coverage of every aspect of performance relevant to all .NET technologies is not possible within a single volume. This book concentrates on the performance of .NET Framework technologies like garbage collection, .NET Remoting, and Code Access Security. Because these technologies form the building blocks upon which all .NET applications run, the information in this book is relevant to all .NET developers.

In addition to providing high-level material on achieving software with good performance characteristics, the books aims to enhance readers knowledge of the design and implementation of the Framework, and to provide the tools and techniques to allow readers to conduct their own investigation into performance problems. Rather
than a tips and tricks approach, the book aims to provide a detailed exploration of each topic, and explore the �whys� and �by how much� aspects (with actual benchmark results) of performance that are often overlooked.