Excerpts from the Introduction:

The C# Essentials online book contains 27 chapters of detailed information intended to provide everything necessary to gain proficiency as a C# programmer.

The book begins with a detailed overview of the C# development and runtime environment with overviews of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), Common Intermediate Language (CIL) and Virtual Execution System (VES) followed by simple steps to creating both Windows and console based C# applications.

A number of chapters are dedicated to the fundamentals of the C# programming language, including topics such as variables, constants, operators, flow control, looping and object oriented programming (including topics such as inheritance and abstract classes). Subsequent chapters focus on issues such as manipulating and formating strings and working with arrays and collection classes.

Once the basics of the C# language have been covered the book focuses on the design of GUI based applications using C# in conjunction with Visual Studio. Topics include the design of key GUI elements (such as forms, toolbars and menus) and a detailed overview of event handling in GUI based C# applications.

The two final chapters of the book are dedicated to the topic of drawing graphics in C#, including the use of bitmap images to create persistent graphics.

On completing C# Essentials it is intended that the reader will have a firm knowledge foundation on which to begin developing complex C# based applications.