The Visual Designers


Visual Designers are the canvases that you work on using the mouse to create items such as forms via drag, drop, move, resize, and the like. Visual Studio 2005 ships with many such Visual Designers. Together, they allow you to build the items that make up your application (and understanding of it). Items include Windows forms, web forms, class diagrams, logical datacenter diagrams, XML schemas, and more.

The Visual Designers all work mostly the same way. First, they take center stage within the IDE as tabbed windows surrounded by various menus, toolbars, and panes. Second, you use the Toolbox as your palette to place items on the designer. You then configure each item's many properties using the Properties window.

Figure 2.12 shows the Windows Forms Designer in action (the middle, highlighted tab). Note that the Toolbox is on the left and the Properties window is set on the bottom right. Additionally, many of the designers have their own toolbars. You can see from this graphic that the Layout toolbar is shown when working with forms. This allows you to easily position controls relative to one another. We will cover the majority of the visual designers in depth in the coming chapters.

Figure 2.12. The Windows Form Designer.





Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Unleashed
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672328194
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 195

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