.NET Archive

In .NET 1.0, the DataGrid control was the primary Windows Forms control for presenting tabular data. Even though that control had a lot of capability and could present basic tabular data well, it was fairly difficult to customize many aspects of the control. Additionally, the DataGrid control didn’t expose enough information to the programmer about the user interactions with the grid and changes occurring in the grid due to programmatic modifications of the data or formatting. Due to these factors and a large number of new features that customers requested, the Windows Client team at Microsoft decided to introduce a replacement control for the DataGrid in .NET 2.0. That new control, the DataGridView control, is the focus of this chapter.

Partial classes permit splitting a single class, interface, or struct into multiple, separate files. There are several advantages to splitting these elements into many files, including permitting more than one developer to work on the same class. Paul Kimmel shows where partial classes are used and how you might use partial keywords to fine-tune your productivity.

"How can Microsoft kill Python? When I say 'kill', I mean 'seriously damage the relevance of Python'. I don't mean that Microsoft, as some have suggested, will work on IronPython for a while, get people using it, then hijack the language by seriously changing the syntax of it and thereby breaking compatibility with CPython. So, how does this damage the relevance of Python? If Microsoft, who is investing considerable time and money to create a .Net implementation of Python, only refers to IronPython as a 'dynamic language' and only pushes it as a 'scripting language', many people will begin to assume that that's all that it is good for."

Code once. Use many. That's what generics are about. Called templates in C++, C# generics support separating code by algorithm and data structure. For example, the generic list means that you'll never again have to write a strongly typed collection. Paul Kimmel shows just how easy it is to define and use generics, long considered one of the most advanced and difficult idioms. This article is adapted from Paul Kimmel's book C# Express.

While demonstrating the rudiments of anonymous methods, Paul Kimmel answers the question "Are anonymous methods just someone being a bit too clever?"

There are more than 50 GUI controls available in the .NET Framework Class Library. This chapter takes a selective look at some of the more important ones. They all derive from the System.Windows.Forms.Control class that provides the inherited properties and methods that all the controls have in common.