Chapter 14. Building Windows Forms

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The Basics of Form Design

• Creating a Form

• Adding Controls and Components

• Creating Your Own Controls

One of the core goals for Visual Studio is enabling rapid Windows Forms construction. Using the Windows Forms Designer, the Controls Toolbox, and the various common controls provided by the .NET Framework, this chapter will serve as your guide to the drag-and-drop creation of rich form-based applications. Specifically, we'll look at how best to leverage the built-in capabilities of the Forms Designer and the Visual Studio project system to quickly build a baseline form from scratch.

We won't worry about the code behind the form at this point; instead, the focus will be on the user interface and Visual Studio's inherent Rapid Application Development (or RAD) capabilities with the Windows Forms Designer. In other words, we will focus on the design-time capabilities of the IDE as opposed to the runtime capabilities of the form and control classes.