7.0 Introduction

Windows Forms is the technology within the .NET Framework that allows you to create and display user interfaces, which include everything from a simple message box to a feature-rich multiple document interface (MDI) application. Windows Forms is a radical departure from user-interface toolkits in earlier versions of Visual Studio, such as the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and Visual Basic form editor. In those technologies, you saved the user-interface definitions using a proprietary file format known only to those languages. Windows Forms, however, takes a different approach. Rather than create a resource file, your source files generate actual code as you add new controls and change various properties.

This chapter covers the different facets of Windows Forms that make it such an exciting technology. Some of the basics are covered such as creating a Windows Forms project, changing a form's properties, and seeing how events are generated within Windows Forms. Parts of this chapter look at some of the more traditionally advanced topics within Windows user-interface programming, such as drag and drop and creating MDI applications.