In Windows, system-wide hot-keys provide a means to trigger functionality within an application regardless of which program is currently in focus. This allows you to develop applications that run from the system tray, etc. and can be displayed or perform some function (like screen capture) without the user having to click on them first.
In previous tutorials to date, we’ve broadly introduced the core concepts and features for developing with .NET, but we have only used Console applications to do this. Most .NET apps you will be writing are likely to be UI based, so let’s look at the most commonly used .NET Windows UI development platform, Windows Forms (or simply WinForms for short).