The nice folks at Bookpool are running a special on Windows Forms 2.0 Programming: only $33! Enjoy.

Even though the 1st printing was just in May of this year, Windows Forms 2.0 Programming just entered the 2nd printing. Thanks for reading!

You said it couldn’t be done, but ATL Internals, 2e, has a review! Thanks, W.

I updated the SDK RegistrySettingsProvider to implement IApplicationSettings and built a sample to demonstrate how to integrate it (or any .NET 2.0 custom settings provider) with the settings designer-generated code. Enjoy.

I just realized that Avalon is getting a book treatment unlike any other topic in my memory:

• “Essential WPF,” by Chris Anderson, architect on the MS WPF team
• “Applications = Code + Markup,” by *the* Charles Petzold
• “WPF Unleashed,” by Adam Nathan of ”.NET and COM: The Complete Interoperability Guide,” *the* book on .NET interop and the correspondingly wonderful pinvoke.net.
• “Programming WPF,” by Ian Griffiths and Chris Sells. Ian’s depth of knowledge of graphics — down to the hardware — continues to amaze me.

User and GDI had Petzold. Win32 had Rector. MFC had Prosise. COM had Box. Indigo’s got no big names I’ve yet seen, but Avalon gets Anderson, Petzold, Nathan *and* Griffiths?!? It’s going to be a bloodbath in the market, but the readers are going to benefit. Why couldn’t I have picked a lightweight topic, like, oh, I don’t know, ASP.NET 2.0? : )

Mr. Petzold beat me to the punch on the Windows Forms 2.0 book and he’s going to do it again on the RTM Avalon book. However, such a thing is dicey, as Mr. Petzold points out.

It was in researching the Windows Forms 1.0 book when I grew to be scared of finalizing a book before the technology was finalized; that’s when they added AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute and it screwed up the entire No-Touch Deployment story. Toward that end, we didn’t ship the WinForms 2.0 book ’til after the .NET 2.0 bits went gold and we won’t ship the paper copy of the Avalon 1.0 book ’til then, either (although I understand ORA is going to be shipping early electronic drafts of our work as we do it). I have to sacrifice 2-3 months on the shelves to my competitors, but I get to be less scared of big, last minute changes.

It’s a judgment call, though. In this era of books with 12-18 month shelf lives, I can’t say Mr. Petzold’s not right…

Update: Whoops — didn’t think of the ways to abuse this system. I’ve updated the offer.

If you post a legitimate review on Amazon for Windows Forms 2.0 Programming before the 4th of July, 2006, I will personally send you my royalties for that copy of the book ($4.77 — don’t spend it all in one place : ).

You have to put your email into the Amazon review so that I can communicate with you about your address and Sells Brothers, Inc. can send you a check, but good review or bad, my royalties for one copy of the book are yours.

The first five reviewers also get signed copies shipped to their home (I’ll get Mike to sign it, too). Again, the email needs to be in the post.

The one where the brothers Sells and I travel to Ann Arbor, MI to see Windows Forms 2.0 Programming being printed. It’s well worth the trip, if you can talk the publisher into arranging it.