16.5. Summary

We covered a tremendous amount of ground in this chapter!

• We discussed the two primary FCL GUI namespaces: System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing.

• We looked specifically at the following building blocks of GUIs:

  • A top-level container: the Form class.

  • Other GUI classes: Label, Button, ListBox, TextBox.

  • How to define the state of the GUI objects by setting property values.

  • How to position GUI objects inside a Form.

  • How to display model message dialog boxes using the MessageBox class.

• We covered the .NET event handling model; in particular, how delegates are used to associate event handling methods with an event source.

• We discussed the philosophy and advantages of model-view separation.

• We talked about the development of a concept of operations, or storyboard, as a means for getting sponsor/client/user buy-in before any code has been written, to ensure that the proposed look and flow of a GUI meets the use case requirements for the system.

• We discussed state retrieval methods as a data sharing technique.

And you saw the pièce de résistance: adding a GUI front-end to the SRS application! We've now come through the full life cycle of the SRS application, beginning with an expression of requirements via use cases in Chapter 9, to an object model in Chapters 10 and 11, a command line–driven program in Chapter 14, a program with file persistence in Chapter 15, and a GUI-driven application in Chapter 16.

So pat yourself on the back. You've come a long way to get to this point in the book. Sixteen chapters ago you might have thought a class was the thing you were sitting in, and now you can use the word GUI and not be referring to the slug that you just stepped on. The world of C# and .NET is an exciting one, and you are now a part of it. Congratulations!