In a way, Windows Forms Programming in C#, by Chris Sells, picks up where Erik Brown's book (of very similar title) leaves off. While Brown's book spends most of its pages describing and using the various controls that are available to Windows Forms developers, Sells' book doesn't talk much about specific controls. It instead focuses on less obvious (and poorly documented) features of Windows Forms and the .NET Framework in general, features that must be mastered to develop and ship a serious Windows Forms application. He does not ignore Visual Studio .NET, but neither is it critical to have a copy to productively read the book.

Unlike Brown's book, each chapter of Sells' book stands on its own. The book doesn't flow as well from cover to cover, but that's okay, because the information is invaluable. As Sells says in the Preface, “this book focuses on the real-world scenarios that aren't covered in detail elsewhere.” True enough; every chapter has stuff that either I didn't know or I had already figured out the hard way. I was particularly enthralled by the chapters on resources, applications and settings, data binding, and multithreaded UI. Most of the data binding material seemed focused on having an SQL database, but there is non-database-driven information in there, and even notice of a critical bug in .NET 1.x that makes data binding to objects more of a chore. Also be sure to read the appendices, which include a colorful essay on the hows and whys of delegates and events.

In summary, if you're doing serious Windows Forms development, you should make sure that you've read this book.