MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam
70-505): Microsoft® .NET Framework
3.5 Windows® Forms Application
Development by Steven J. Stein
A Well-Written, Nearly-Comprehensive Training Kit
Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-505 and
on the job. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews
that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you
ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. This
official Microsoft study guide is designed to help you make the most of
your study time. Maximize your performance on the exam by learning to:
Create the user interface, configuring controls at design or run time Apply
best practices for UI design Access, query, bind, and display data Enhance
usability MDIs, drag-and-drop, persistence, accessibility Manage the print
process Use asynchronous methods to optimize UI responsiveness
Develop custom Windows Forms controls Configure and deploy your

application Assess your skills with the practice tests on CD. You can work
through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your
specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong
answers including a customized learning path that describes how and
where to focus your studies. Your kit includes: 15% exam discount from
Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13. Details inside. Official self-paced study
guide. Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a
learning plan based on your results. 300+ practice and review questions.
Code samples in Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# on CD. 90-day trial
of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. Case scenarios,
exercises, and best practices. Fully searchable eBook of this guide.
Personal Review: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-505):
Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Forms Application
Development by Steven J. Stein
This book is an excellent high-level review / introduction (depending on
your experience) of Windows Forms Application development under the
.NET Framework 3.5. The topics covered are vast and reasonably
detailed, and I felt that it accurately reflected the exam and its
requirements. Combined with the training exam to prompt some additional
research, the entire kit is very well-rounded.
The book itself has very few typos and no grammatical errors that come
to mind. All but one or two examples are completely correct, without any
misleading information. Each chapter covers a related set of topics in fair
detail - the first half of the book is more of a blitz review of all the controls
and events, whereas the remainder covers most details and intricacies
quite well. The only topics I felt could have used more coverage were
LINQ, WPF (and deployments), and permissions (at least a review of
them). While these are each major topics in other books (LINQ in
ADO.NET and WPF & security & deployments in WPF), at least a minor
review would have been helpful in sorting out some of the details and
making things clearer.
Aside from those minor points - which were taken care of with a quick
review of some permissions online - the book text is sufficient to pass the
exam. The coverage of DataSets may seem cursory, but such detailed
functionality is a topic more suited to ADO.NET, not this exam. Again, the
coverage suits the exam. The permissions issues tend to revolve around
installation and UAC (in Vista) issues that aren't covered or explained
thoroughly. Printer permissions are covered quite well, but most others and
the tools involved are not and could use more coverage; if the security
models from the 70-536 exam are still in your mind, you'll be fine.
The preparation exams compliment the book very well, pointing out areas
that need focus and are not examined thoroughly in the book. For
example, the book covers various ToolStrip controls and the exams ask
implementation-based questions. The same is true of handling events.
Many questions in the preparation exams are very close in substance or

intention to the real exam questions. I recommend iterating through the
exams several times - more and more interesting or obscure questions will
surface as you take them, most of which will prompt a little reading. The
one glaring issue I draw with the exam is that it asks how to handle thread
exceptions and claims that the AppDomain.UnhandledException event can
handle them - this is false, as a little reading on MSDN will show.
In all, I feel this book continues well with most others in giving readers
another piece of Microsoft's grand .NET Framework 3.5 programming
model. Understanding how rich Windows Forms Applications can be and
how to use them is very important, even in the days of WPF. This ties
together some of the pillars of .NET 3.5 and provides what I feel to be very
good coverage of the topics - more than enough to improve your
applications.
For More 5 Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price:
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-505): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5
Windows® Forms Application Development by Steven J. Stein 5 Star Customer Reviews
and Lowest Price!