New Pluralsight Course: Introduction to the .NET BackgroundWorker Component

I'm happy to announce that my new Pluralsight course is now available: Introduction to the .NET BackgroundWorker Component.

The BackgroundWorker component is one of my favorite little tools. It does a great job of keeping the UI responsive by moving a long-running process onto another thread. It also includes progress reporting, cancellation support, and error handling -- all in an easy-to-use package.

Introduction to the .NET BackgroundWorker Component

Keep your UI responsive. If we're not careful, a long-running process will cause our application to "lock up". The BackgroundWorker component gives us an easy-to-use solution by moving that long-running process off of our UI thread. We'll see how the BackgroundWorker component can keep our WinForms, WPF, or Silverlight UI responsive and also explore features such as progress reporting, cancellation, and error handling. After that, we'll see how easily the BackgroundWorker component fits in with an application using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern. And finally, we'll compare the BackgroundWorker component to the Task Parallel Library to make sure we're using the right tool for the job.

After watching this (short) course, you will know everything there is to know about the BackgroundWorker component (yes, it really is that simple). Here are the modules:

• BackgroundWorker Overview
  Here, we take a look at the problem the BackgroundWorker solves: a non-responsive UI due to a long-running process. Then we see the basics of using the BackgroundWorker component in a WinForms application and in a WPF application.
• Progress, Cancellation, and Error Handling
  We take a deeper dive into the features including progress reporting, cancellation, and error handling. We see that the component handles communication between the threads for us, so we don't need to worry about those details.
• BackgroundWorker and MVVM
  How does the BackgroundWorker component fit in with an application that uses the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern? Very well, actually. MVVM applications have the same potential issue (a long-running process that locks up the UI), so we can use the same solution: the BackgroundWorker component.
• BackgroundWorker vs. Task
  Finally, we replicate the BackgroundWorker component functionality using the Task Parallel Library (TPL). What we find is that all of the functionality is there, but sometimes it's easier to use a specific-purpose tool (the BackgroundWorker) than a general-purpose tool (the TPL).

Lots of great info all in one place. Be sure to check it out: Introduction to the .NET BackgroundWorker Component.

Happy Coding!