Naming Objects | Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 2010 in 24 Hours Complete Starter Kit (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)

The property you should set first for any new object is the Name property. Press F4 to display the Properties window (if it's not already visible), and notice the Name given to your default form (the first property listed in the Properties window) ”Form1. When you first create an object, C# gives the object a unique, generic name based on the object's type. Although these names are functional, they aren't very descriptive. For instance, C# named your form Form1, but it's common to have dozens of forms in a project, and it would be extremely difficult to manage a complicated project if all forms were distinguishable only by a number (Form2, Form3, and so forth).

In actuality, what you're creating is a form class, or template, that will be used to create and show forms at runtime. For the purpose of this quick tour, I simply refer to it as a form. See Hour 5, "Building Forms ”Part I," for more information.

To better manage your forms, you should give each one a descriptive name. C# gives you the chance to name new forms as they're created. Because C# created this default form for you, you didn't get a chance to name it, so you must change both the filename and name of the form. Change the name of the form now by clicking the Name property and changing the text from Form1 to fclsViewer. Notice that this did not change the filename of the form as it is displayed in the Solution Explorer window. Change the filename now by right-clicking Form1.cs in the Solution Explorer window, choosing Rename from the context menu, and changing the text from Form1.cs to fclsViewer.cs. In future examples, I won't have you change the filename each time because you'll have enough steps to accomplish as it is. I do recommend, however, that you always change your filenames to something meaningful in your 'real' projects.

I use the fcls prefix here to denote that the file is a form class. There are different types of classes, so using a prefix helps differentiate the classes in code. You're not required by C# to use object prefixes, but I highly recommend that you do so. In Hour 12, "Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays," you'll learn the benefits of using a naming convention as well as the standard prefixes for many .NET objects.

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