Exploring Secrets of Persistent Application Settings

he MSDN documentation includes a lot of material on persisting application settings in a Windows application (see Application Settings for Windows Forms ). But like much documentation, it's primarily a reference rather than a practical implementation guide, giving the complex and intricate usage details of settings without giving a clear and concise discussion of typical simple uses—exactly what a large number of users will be interested in. This article attempts to provide some tips on implementation.

You generally implement application settings because you want your program to remember changes users made, such as setting toolbar visibility, tracking menu checkboxes, maintaining split-window positions, or storing recent selections from an options dialog. Ideally, you'd want to store such settings simply and easily while writing minimal custom code. It's best to start with the basics. Here's the scoop in a nutshell.