Practical Mono

by Mark Mamone

Book Overview

The Mono project is an open source implementation of the groundbreaking Microsoft .NET platform, backed by Novell and supported by thousands of contributors from around the world. Practical Mono offers readers a detailed examination of Mono and its many facets, such as building GUI-based applications with Gtk#, database interaction ADO.NET, and creating powerful applications with XML and Web Services.

By embracing this implementation, users...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1484220188
• ISBN13: 9781484220184
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 1.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Starter to Intemediate book

I picked up this book, hoping it would be to the usual APress standard and I wasn't disappointed. I've played with .NET on the Windows platform before but had often wished that this technology would be made available on Open Source. When Mono was introduced, I wanted to get my hands dirty but not start learning all the facets of .NET from scratch and without having to go through the trauma of understanding the implications, how GTK+ may hook in etc. I was therefore overjoyed to find that this book covered all of this and more and using a practical book project rather than theoretical examples. It starts gently which I was happy to go through as I picked up a tip here and there. The C# primer chapters were comprehensive and I use them to as a reference guide. Then we went into chapters that covered ADO.NET, ASP.NET, XML, Networking and much much more. The Author has not only covered the essentials but added tips along the way and these proved very useful in ensuring that I was following a standard path. At the end of the book, I feel comfortable with .NET and Mono and its all within the familiar surroundings of Open Source. How could it get any better! I'd therefore recommend this book to anybody wanting to no more and .NET, Mono and more.

Detailed Review

At first glance, you would think that Practical Mono is yet another introductory book about C# and Mono, but all of that drastically changes the moment you look at the book's table of contents and see the variety of topics it covers and the lengths to which the author goes to describe the more important details. The book gently eases the into what .NET and Mono are giving a historical background for each. What I found very interesting is the fact the author takes time to explain about .NET in the real world, and ties this to Mono to give the reader a clear idea of how any why Mono was started and what the reader can do to participate in this effort. Since a lot of people using Mono might be coming from a traditional .NET environment, the author expects those people to be used to certain development tools. To that effect, the second chapter in the book is dedicated to introducing the reader to development tools that can be used with Mono, especially Mono Develop. This gives the reader some heads up about what can be used instead of their conventional development tools and makes sure you start off on solid grounds. Having gotten the user all set up and ready for action, the book then moves on to introduce the author to C#. This is a subtle introduction that eases the user into what C# is and how the language works. Chapter 3 comes in very handy when you want to brush up on your C# skills or are new to C#. the author continues to give the reader more information about C# in a more detailed fashion in Chapter 4, "Learning C#: Beyond the Basics". This chapter goes into some nitty-gritty detail about C# classes, exceptions, and all round more advanced C# topics. Chapter 5 moves into the more exotic areas of .NET that deal with the CLR, IL, assemblies, and the general assembly cache (GAC). This chapter is very helpful if the reader wishes to acquire in depth info of how the .NET environment works. Other discussed topics here are garbage collection, application domains, and the class library. This is one of those chapters that make this book an excellent recommendation for both novice and advanced users of C# and .NET. The first 5 chapters have made sure the user is very knowledgeable about what Mono is, what .NET is, what C# is, and how all of them relate to each other. They have also explained C# and introduced the reader to its syntax and advanced features. Starting with Chapter 6, the "Practical" bit from the books title starts to kick in quite strongly. If its a book with both theoretical and real world information that you want, then the coming chapters are really going to quench your thirst. Chapter 6 goes right into the heart of on of .NET's most desired features, Windows Forms. The author explains what Windows Forms is, what GDI+ is, how to implement a good user interface, and gives real world examples of how to do all of that introducing the reader to Windows Forms' various controls. A nice section that is mentioned in several chapters i