Chapter 05 : Fundamentals of Programming Windows Forms and Controls

Overview

Chapter 2 gives you step-by-step instructions for starting a Microsoft Windows application project. This type of project initially opens to a Windows form. Chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate how to add controls from the Toolbox in the IDE to a Windows form. Previous examples using Windows Forms emphasize graphical approaches and stress the comparability of forms in a Windows application project with forms in a classic Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Access project.

This chapter takes a more systematic approach to introducing forms and controls in a Windows application project. In three major sections, you will gain a solid foundation in programming Windows Forms and controls with Visual Basic .NET. The first section presents several samples that illustrate the kind of functionality you can manage with code behind a form. This section takes a close look at code generated by the Windows Form Designer before launching into a series of samples that extends and complements this automatically generated code. You also learn where to look to discover programming syntax tips from the Windows Form Designer.

The second section in this chapter examines programming issues associated with using more than one form in an application. You will learn two styles for opening one form from another, as well as techniques for sharing data among the code modules of each form in an application.

The chapter closes with an in-depth look at coding techniques for managing traditional controls, such as text boxes, combo boxes, and list boxes. You will also see sample code that deals with new types of controls introduced with Visual Basic .NET, such as the PictureBox control and the LinkLabel control. The control sample code demonstrates traditional Access database programming chores, such as working with ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) data access.