Architectural Guide to Winforms Development?

[kmsuzuki]

I'm primarily a class library developer, but I've written a few small
tools in my day using forms (VB6/Java/Winforms) and my libraries have
been used in larger forms apps. The thing is, I've never seen a well
architected forms app in my 12-year career and I'm wondering if there
is a book or some resource that deals specifically with designing a
forms app.

In the class library/component world, it's relatively easy to implement
design patterns and graceful object-oriented designs, I suppose because
we don't have to keep so many balls in the air and visually interact
with users. Are there common patterns and designs for forms
development? I understand and have implemented simple
Model-View-Controller and Model-View designs, but I'd like to know of
other designs (are there any?) and how compatible they are with
WinForms development. I would love to have a resource that goes deep
into some of the common issues with forms like forms management (ie
organizaing, caching, reusing), use of dialogs, data encapsulation,
messaging between GUI objects, and so on. I'm quite comfortable with
the mechanics of WinForms, so I'm looking for something more
design-oriented.

Thanks for any pointers.

 

[Tim_Mac]

you could try looking at the latest microsoft sample winforms
application. i'm very impressed with the design of it, and i have
pulled some parts of it out as a library to re-use in my own
applications.
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=U&start...nt/codesamples/fotovision/default.aspx&e=7249

althought it won't compare with an in-depth book style discussion on
application design, the code is extremely well commented and there
isn't all that much code to get bogged down in. i'd highly recommend
it to jump right in and see how the best guys design their apps.

 

[Tim_Mac]

by the way, the sample application is called FotoVision and it is a
digital photo management tool, with pretty good image editing features,
web server synchronisation, etc.