Comments on: .NET Basics – Do Work in Background Thread to Keep GUI Responsive

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:44:45 +0000

Take a look at – http://www.albahari.com/threading/ for a good intro to threading.

By: hollidevil

hollidevil — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:12:07 +0000

Excellent work…can you provide links where I could study in depth about Threads and their types and all..
Thanks

By: » Suplanus

» Suplanus — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:30:22 +0000

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By: Gold Post

Gold Post — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:23:33 +0000

Andreas,
It is not a good idea to use he finally block for normal code execution. Exceptions are for errors. Also, when an exception is thrown, the performance of the app stinks.

Sean,
Great article!

By: Andreas Wawa

Andreas Wawa — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:59:15 +0000

Thanks Sean for your excellent work!!
Simply put: when I’ve a button fireing several Methods in row(gathering infos, copying files (some 2 GB, i takes time..), installing, doSomeScripts, another_install etc.) and EVERY single method MUST wait for previous one to be acomplished (there is no point in installing when the files still are not copied!) all what I need to do, is just put then next method (say after copying the next one is installing()) in finally-block of “bgWorker_RunWorkerCompleted” method??
Andreas

By: Ram

Ram — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:15:38 +0000

I agree with all of the other poster’s comments – this is by far the best threading tutorial dealing with unresponsive UI that google search could bring up. I waded through several links but persistence paid of and found this gem that you have created on the second page full of links!
I am trying to build a Windows front end that captures sensor data via Ethernet/UDP and display it dynamically in a GUI, and I am confident that the knowledge gained from your article will help me greatly. Thank You!

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:56:08 +0000

p.s.s. also i’m doing something funkier with the _ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) function:

the ProgressChangedEventArgs e object has a property called e.UserState which is an object.

I’m using this backgroundworker in an app where I am sending an Image to a ListView for display as it finds the Images on disk. So I am actually passing the Image object to the ProgressChanged handler by passing the Image as a (object) through the e.UserState !

then my progresschanged handler function casts it back to (Image) and adds it to the ListView.LargeImageList

and it works! and it works pretty fast too! so just a tip since e.UserState is an (object) you could pass almost anything through it and cast it back at the UI thread’s handler function.

By: David

David — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:43:32 +0000

Thanks Sean, I had always been aware of doing things in a background thread being a good practice with windows forms but was daunted by the idea of turning an otherwise simple app multi-threaded. Thanks to your examples I don’t have to be further disgusted by my overuse of application.doevents(). Much appreciated!

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:15:23 +0000

Thanks Albert. Good question (why). My quick guess is that the underlying Win32 controls are not thread-safe, so we have to appoint a single thread to do all of the updates. But I’d like to dig a little bit deeper to also understand the lower-level aspects of what’s going on. Stay tuned–sounds like a good topics for a future post.

By: albert

albert — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:42:31 +0000

This is the best UI multithreading tutorial on the web I have found yet. Everyone else’s tutorial is horrible. This one here is the most concise, most descriptive, most easily understandable. I feel like all the other tutorials are just copying off eachother and no one knows how to explain it well. Thanks for writing one that finally explains it well.

P.S. No one has explained *why* a form control can never be updated from outside the UI thread. Why can that never happen? Is it just a security measure .net has to prevent controls from being manipulated by viruses or other programs?

By: Dirk

Dirk — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:24:11 +0000

Thanks mate!

By: Batul

Batul — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Thanks a lot. This post is really useful. I started as a novice in threading… but got my application working. Many many thanks.