Mono: A Developer's Notebook

This is not one of these books with 800 pages hastily filled with big type text, enormous screen captures and gigantic tables enumerating all member functions in class XMLTextReader. This book has only got 262 pages of text, but 262 pages which are useful from the first word to the last word, and in which a little bit of everything Mono is shown to us with simple but effective examples.

The first three chapters tell us how to install the Mono environment and introduce us to C# and its system class libraries. You'll need to already know how to program in order to grasp these chapters: this book will not tell you what a variable or a class member is.

Chapters 4 and 5 show us how to make GTK# and GNOME# applications, using GConf, making druids, embedding Gecko in the application, etc. I particularly like these two chapters as they taught me a lot of things without overwhelming me with code as other GUI programming books did.

Chapter 6 teaches about XML processing: consuming and producing, parsing, validating, transforming, etc. This is another subject with which books tend to overwhelm, but this one didn't.

Chapter 7 discusses communications: ASP.NET (web apps and services), sockets, web clients, databases, etc. I found the ASP.NET part a little bit too short, but it gave me enough information to know what to look for in the Microsoft site.

Chapter 8, finally, touches some advanced subjects, such as using autoconf/automake, tips for writing multiplatform applications, using Java or Basic code, etc.

Great resource for Mono users (4/4 people found this helpful)

This isn't a book that's going to teach you everything you need to know about C# or GTK, and nor does it claim to be. It is however a book you'll want to have if you're going to use either of them with Mono. There's a good overview of C#, and then coverage of GTK, threading, XML, etc. (see the table of contents for details, but it's basically a wide range of technologies that you're likely to need in order to build a professional quality application).

I found the Advanced GTK chapter especially useful as it covers the kind of things that add that extra bit of polish; drag and drop, druids, GConf and 2D graphics are all there.

There are chapters on ASP.NET and connecting to databases, but I've not read them yet so can't comment on how easy that is. There's also a very handy example of how to use the autotools to package Mono applications.

It's a great book, and at the current price (just over 12 quid) I think people interested in Mono would be mad not to buy it. I'd never done any C# before I bought this, and combined with MonoDevelop (a free IDE) and Jesse Liberty's "Programming C#" I knocked up a small yet useful application in what seemed like no time (see spamtrainer.sourceforge.net).

Categories

Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> Digital Lifestyle -> Online Shopping -> Amazon
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> Microsoft Windows -> Operating Systems -> Windows NT -> General AAS
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> Networking & Security -> Network Topics -> General AAS
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> Software & Graphics -> General AAS
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> Web Development -> Web Design -> Web Graphics & Animation
Books -> Subjects -> Computing & Internet -> General AAS
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Paperback
Books -> Refinements -> Font Size (format_browse-bin) -> Regular Size

Edd Dumbill, Niel M. Bornstein

Reader Reviews:

Just the kind of technical books I want (5/5 people found this helpful)

Great resource for Mono users (4/4 people found this helpful)

Similar Products

Categories