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| Preface | |
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| About the Author | |
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| About the Technical Reviewer | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Introduction | |
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| About This Book | |
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| Chapter Overview | |
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| Creating Usable Interfaces | |
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| Why Worry About the Interface? | |
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| A Brief History of User Interfaces | |
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| The Command-Line Era | |
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| The Question-Answer Model | |
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| The Menu-Driven Model | |
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| The GUI Era | |
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| Creativity vs. Convention | |
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| Consistency in .NET | |
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| The "Act-Like-Microsoft" Principle | |
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| Administrative Utilities | |
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| Know Your Application Type | |
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| Know Your User | |
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| Handling Complexity | |
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| Segmenting Information | |
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| Inductive User Interface | |
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| Helpful Restrictions | |
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| Restricting the User's Ability to Make a Mistake | |
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| Restricting the User's Choices | |
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| Restricting the User's Imagination | |
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| Programming User Interface for the Web | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Designing with Classes and Tiers | |
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| Classes and Objects | |
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| The Roles of Classes | |
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| Classes and Types | |
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| More About Objects | |
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| User Interface Classes in .NET | |
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| Controls Are Classes | |
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| Controls Contain Other Controls | |
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| Controls Derive from Other Controls | |
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| Inheritance and the Form Class | |
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| The Controls Collection | |
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| Generating Code with Visual Studio .NET | |
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| Interacting with a Control | |
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| The View-Mediator Pattern | |
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| Smart Controls | |
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| Smart Forms | |
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| Encapsulation | |
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| Use Enumerations and Resource Classes | |
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| Use Collections | |
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| Restrain from Sharing Control References | |
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| Define a Data Transfer Plan | |
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| Use a Central Switchboard | |
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| Create Data-Driven User Interfaces | |
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| Developing in Tiers | |
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| Problems with Three-Tier Design | |
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| Three-Tier Design Consistency | |
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| Fixing Three-Tier Design | |
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| The DataSet to the Rescue | |
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| Validation and Business Objects | |
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| Other Types of Application | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Control Class Basics | |
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| The Windows Forms Package | |
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| The .NET Solution | |
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| The Control Class | |
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| Position and Size | |
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| Color | |
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| Fonts and Text | |
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| Access Keys | |
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| Control Relations | |
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| Focus and the Tab Sequence | |
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| Responding to the Mouse and Keyboard | |
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| A Mouse/Keyboard Example | |
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| Mouse Cursors | |
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| Graphics and Painting | |
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| Low-Level Members | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Classic Controls | |
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| Types of Controls | |
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| Invisible Controls | |
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| Provider Controls | |
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| ActiveX Controls | |
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| Should You Import ActiveX Controls? | |
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| The Classic Control Gallery | |
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| Labels | |
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| LinkLabel | |
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| Button | |
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| TextBox | |
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| CheckBox and RadioButton | |
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| PictureBox | |
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| List Controls | |
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| Other Domain Controls | |
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| Organizational Controls | |
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| The Date Controls | |
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| The DateTimePicker | |
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| MonthCalendar | |
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| Menus | |
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| The Menu Class | |
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| The MainMenu and ContextMenu Classes | |
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| The MenuItem Class | |
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| The Visual Studio .NET Menu Designer | |
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| Attaching a Menu | |
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| Menu Events | |
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| Copying and Cloning a Menu | |
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| Merging a Menu | |
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| Owner-Drawn Menus | |
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| An Owner-Drawn Menu Control | |
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| Drag-and-Drop | |
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| "Fake" Drag-and-Drop | |
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| Authentic Drag-and-Drop | |
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| Validation | |
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| A Validation Example | |
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| Validating with the ErrorProvider | |
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| Validating with Regular Expressions | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Forms | |
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| The Form Class | |
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| Form Size and Position | |
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| Scrollable Forms | |
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| Showing a Form | |
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| Custom Dialog Windows | |
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| IgnoreForm Interaction | |
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| Form Ownership | |
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| Windows XP Styles | |
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| Prebuilt Dialogs | |
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| Resizable Forms | |
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| The Problem of Size | |
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| A Traditional Solution | |
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| Minimum and Maximum Size | |
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| Anchoring | |
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| Docking | |
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| Splitting Windows | |
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| Docking with Panels | |
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| Other Split Windows | |
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| Irregularly Shaped Forms | |
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| Shaped Form Content | |
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| Moving Shaped Forms | |
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| Forms with Holes | |
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| Visual Inheritance | |
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| Making an Ancestor Control Available | |
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| Adding an Ancestor Property | |
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| Overriding an Event Handler | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Modern Controls | |
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| The ImageList | |
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| Dealing with the ImageList in Code | |
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| ListView and TreeView | |
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| Basic ListView | |
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| Advanced ListView Tricks | |
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| Label Editing | |
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| Adding Information to a ListView | |
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| Basic TreeView | |
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| TreeView Structure | |
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| TreeView Navigation | |
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| Manipulating Nodes | |
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| Selecting Nodes | |
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| Advanced TreeView Tricks | |
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| Node Pictures | |
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| Expanding and Collapsing Levels | |
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| TreeView Drag-and-Drop | |
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| Taming the TreeView | |
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| A Project Tree | |
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| A Data-Aware TreeView | |
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| Unusual Trees | |
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| Design-Time Support for the Custom TreeView | |
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| The ToolBar | |
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| Synchronizing the ToolBar | |
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| The StatusBar | |
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| Basic StatusBar | |
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| Synchronizing the StatusBar to a Menu | |
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| The TabControl | |
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| The NotifyIcon | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Custom Controls | |
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| Types of Custom Controls | |
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| User Controls | |
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| Creating User Controls | |
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| The Progress User Control | |
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| The Bitmap Thumbnail Viewer | |
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| Testing the BitmapViewer | |
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| BitmapViewer Events | |
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| BitmapViewer Enhancements and Threading | |
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| Inherited Controls | |
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| Inherited Controls or User Controls? | |
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| The DirectoryTree Control | |
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| Testing the DirectoryTree | |
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| A Masked TextBox Control | |
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| Custom Extender Providers | |
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| The Menu Text Provider | |
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| The Help Icon Provider | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Design-Time Support for Custom Controls | |
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| Control Projects | |
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| The Class Library Project | |
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| Referencing a Custom Control | |
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| The GAC | |
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| Control Designer Basics | |
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| Attributes | |
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| Basic Serialization | |
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| The Toolbox Bitmap | |
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| Resource Files | |
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| Testing Custom Controls | |
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| Debugging Design-Time Support | |
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| Testing for Design Mode | |
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| The PropertyGrid Control | |
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| Custom Designers | |
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| Filtering Properties and Events | |
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| Designer Verbs | |
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| Control Designer Notifications | |
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| Data Types and UITypeEditors | |
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| Using Prebuilt UITypeEditors | |
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| Custom UITypeEditors | |
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| Licensing Custom Controls | |
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| Simple LIC File Licensing | |
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| Custom LIC File Licensing | |
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| Advanced License Providers | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Data Controls | |
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| Introducing Data Binding | |
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| Basic Data Binding | |
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| Simple List Binding | |
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| Binding Lists to Complex Objects | |
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| Single-Value Binding | |
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| ADO.NET Data Binding | |
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| Multiple Control Binding | |
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| Updating with Data Binding | |
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| Formatting Data Before Binding | |
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| Advanced Conversions | |
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| Row Validation and Changes | |
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| Data Binding Exposed | |
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| Navigation with Data Binding | |
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| Reacting to Record Navigation | |
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| Creating Master-Detail Forms | |
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| Creating a New Binding Context | |
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| The DataGrid Control | |
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| DataGrid Relations | |
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| DataGrid Column Mapping | |
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| Creating Custom DataGrid Column Styles | |
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| Encapsulation with Data Controls | |
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| Validating Bound Data | |
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| Data-Aware Controls | |
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| A Decoupled TreeView with Just-in-Time Nodes | |
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| Can There Be a Data-Bound ListView Control? | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| MDI Interfaces and Workspaces | |
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| The Story of MDI | |
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| Types of MDI Applications | |
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| MDI Essentials | |
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| Finding Your Relatives | |
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| Synchronizing MDI Children | |
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| MDI Layout | |
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| Merging Menus | |
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| Managing Interface State | |
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| Document-View Architecture | |
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| A Document-View Ordering Program | |
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| Floating Windows and Docking | |
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| Floating Toolbars | |
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| Dockable Windows | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Dynamic User Interface | |
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| The Case for Dynamic User Interface | |
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| Creating Controls at Runtime | |
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| A System Tray Application | |
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| Using Controls in a Drawing Program | |
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| Dynamic Content | |
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| Localization | |
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| A Dynamic Menu Example | |
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| Data-Driven Programming | |
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| A Data-Driven Pricing Application | |
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| Control Layout Engines | |
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| The SingleLineFlow Layout Manager | |
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| Control Layout Engines As Extender Providers | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| GDI+ Basics | |
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| Paint Sessions with GDI+ | |
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| Accessing the Graphics Object | |
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| Painting and Refreshing | |
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| Optimizing GDI+ Painting | |
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| Painting and Resizing | |
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| Painting Portions of a Window | |
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| Rendering Mode and Antialiasing | |
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| Double Buffering | |
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| Painting and Debugging | |
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| The Graphics Class | |
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| Coordinate Systems and Transformations | |
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| Pens | |
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| Brushes | |
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| Hit Testing | |
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| Hit Testing Nonrectangular Shapes | |
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| The ControlPaint Class | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| GDI+ Controls | |
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| Simple GDI+ Controls | |
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| A Gradient Label | |
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| Improving the GradientLabel's Design-Time Support | |
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| A Marquee Label | |
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| Creating Button Controls | |
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| A Hot Tracking Button | |
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| Reconsidering the Vector Drawing Program | |
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| Solving the Bounding Problem | |
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| A Simple Graphing Control | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Help and Application-Embedded Support | |
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| The Case for Help | |
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| Types of Help | |
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| WinHelp | |
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| WinHelp 95 | |
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| HTML Help | |
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| MS Help 2 | |
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| Some Help Authoring Tools | |
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| Classic Bad Help | |
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| Basic Help with the HelpProvider | |
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| Control-Based and Form-Based Help | |
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| Invoking Help Programmatically | |
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| Help Without the HelpProvider | |
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| Using Database-Based Help | |
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| Using Task-Based Help | |
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| Creating Your Own Help | |
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| Application-Embedded Support | |
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| Affordances | |
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| Agents | |
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| The Last Word | |
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| Index | |