Common · Literature

Windows Forms

Graphical user interface software library

Windows Forms, also known as WinForms, is a free, open-source graphical user interface (GUI) class library for building Windows desktop applications, included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono, providing a platform to write client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. While it is seen as a replacement for the earlier and more complex C++ based Microsoft Foundation Class Library, it does not offer a comparable paradigm and only acts as a platform for the user interface tier in a multi-tier solution.

At the Microsoft Connect event on December 4, 2018, Microsoft announced releasing Windows Forms as an open source project on GitHub. It is released under the MIT License. With this release, Windows Forms has become available for projects targeting the .NET Core framework. However, the framework is still available only on the Windows platform, and Mono's incomplete implementation of Windows Forms remains the only cross-platform implementation. A Windows Forms application is an event-driven application supported by Microsoft's .NET Framework. Unlike a batch program, it spends most of its time simply waiting for the user to do something, such as fill in a text box or click a button. The code for the application can be written in a .NET programming language such as C# or Visual Basic. Windows Forms provides access to native Windows User Interface Common Controls by wrapping the existent Windows API in managed code.

Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0. · Image: Microsoft (Public domain) ·