Using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003

So far, you haven't used a tool for developing a GUI application. Still, the source code for the application hasn't exceeded more than about 25 lines. This richness and developer productivity for GUI application development has been unheard of, particularly in the C++ developer camp. However, the real developer productivity in developing GUI applications appears when a tool is used. Visual Studio .NET 2003 provides a single tool that can be used by C#, Visual Basic .NET, Managed C++, and Visual J# programmers to visually develop rich and great-looking Windows applications. Apart from the traditional functionality of an IDE (debugging, project management, and so on), you can greatly reduce your development time by developing forms by dragging and dropping controls, menus , and the like to a form canvas and associating event handlers.

To develop a Windows Forms application, create a new project with your choice of programming language and select the Windows Forms application (.NET) as the project type. After the project is loaded, a blank form is created for you. Drag and drop controls that you want to use onto the form, and create event handlers by clicking the appropriate controls. The only code that you will need to provide is the event handler logic; all the controls and layout management code are pregenerated by the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

USING VISUAL STUDIO .NET TO VISUALLY BUILD FORMS

If there is one area where you cannot argue with the strength of an integrated development environment such as Visual Studio .NET, it is probably regarding Windows forms development. Even though it is definitely possible to develop Windows forms applications without any tool, managing a complex GUI application without a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tool becomes impractical after a certain degree of complexity.

Figure 7.2. Using Visual Studio .NET Designer to build Windows Forms applications.