GDI+ Programming: Creating Custom Controls Using C#

The opening section of the book investigates the .NET Framework classes that implement GDI+. It covers all of the classes, methods and techniques needed to create, manipulate, and display precise graphics in a form, a page being sent to a printer or an image.

On this foundation, the second section describes how to design and build effective custom controls for use in a business environment. Topics covered include building composite controls, implementing keyboard navigation, and enhancing design-time support.

The final section of the book explores the use of GDI+ and ASP.NET to build custom controls that can provide reusable, GUI components for web projects and to deliver customized graphics over the Internet.

If you are moving up from GDI, you will find that GDI+ is about 50 times slower, but 50 times easier to program.


Excellent Book   February 12, 2003
It delivers what it promises. You will be able to write printing code, make your own controls, etc., after reading this book.


Learn to Create Dynamic Graphics   October 8, 2002
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

One of my first .NET ah-hah experiences back in 2001 was creating an .aspx file that I could reference as a graphic (!). The .aspx file received two query parameters which informed it of the file name of the jpg and the width that the returned image was supposed to be. So then in an IMG tag, I would simply put src="ShowPicture.aspx?file=product1343.jpg&width=100" and it would display a thumbnail of that picture 100 pixels wide and proportionally high. This is an excellent way to produce dynamic pictures as well as protect your online photographs (show thumbnails to visitors, full sized pictures to members), and the .NET GDI+ classes are straight-forward and easy to use. Ever since then I have been looking for a book which goes into deeper detail of creating graphics in .NET with the GDI+ classes. Wrox has finally produced this book! In chapters 1 through 10 you get the basics: pens, brushes, texts, fonts, image manipulation, paths, regions and printing. Then in the rest of the book you learn how to make custom controls which create custom graphics (I love books that teach two things at a time -- great for developers who do four things at a time). If you read this book, you will think about graphics differently, namely, as dynamic objects which your application, the user and the environment can manipulate at run time. Very exciting.


Excellent Introduction!   September 19, 2002
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This is the kind of book you want to read when you want to get started with GDI+ development, and custom controls in particular. Yes, there are a lot of things that are not explained, but they, GDI+ and custom control development is a huge topic and couldn't possibly be covered in one book! The information provided in this book is excellent. It covers the basics of GDI+, custom control development, printing, and even web related stuff you may not think of at first. What's missing is how to build input-oriented controls, such as as fancy grids or spreadsheets and other advanced topics. But then again, I wouldn't expect a book like this to cover these topics.