Windows Forms
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Microsoft Windows Forms is the name given to the GUI portion of the Microsoft .NET development framework, providing access to the native Windows widgets by wrapping the existing Win32 API in managed code.
While it is seen as a replacement for the earlier and more complex C++ based Microsoft Foundation Classes it does not offer comparable features such as the Model View Controller "Document/View" architecture.
The implementation exists within the .NET Framework namespace System.Windows.Forms and tries to correctly theme itself on Windows XP. There are, however, significant issues with this support regarding tab sheets and controls placed on these sheets.
Other GUI toolkits for .NET include
- GTK#: wrapper for the GTK+ toolkit.
- VCL.NET: Borland's wrapper for the Win32 widgets, provided as part of Delphi.NET.
- DotGNU: draws the widgets itself.
External links
- Official community site (http://www.windowsforms.net/)
- MSDN: Building Windows Forms applications (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/winforms/)