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Introduction To Windows Forms Using Visual Studio

In this article I will give introduction to windows forms.

Software Requirement

Before you start reading this tutorial you should make sure that visual studio(any version) is installed on your machine.

Prerequisite Knowledge

Before you go ahead, it is required that you should have some programming experience in any language.

What Is A Windows Application?

Windows application is a system that runs locally on user’s computer having Microsoft Windows operating system (windows XP and above).

For example MSWord is a windows application that runs locally on user’s computer. If other user wants to use it, then he has to install it on his machine.

What Is Windows Form?

A form is the basic unit of a windows based application.

What Is Visual Studio?

Visual studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) from Microsoft. An IDE is a software application that helps in speeding up the software development.

Picture showing the visual studio IDE for creating applications

How To Create Windows Based Project In Visual Studio

To create a new windows based application

Open Visual Studio.
Click on File from the menu.
In the menu option click on New Project…
A popup window appears.

Picture showing the New Project menu for creating a new project in visual studio

In the above image Visual C# is the programming language, Windows Form Application is the project type and in the Name textbox we specify the application name.

Click Ok to create the project.

Different Sections Of Visual Studio

Picture showing the different sections of the visual studio IDE

In the figure above different sections of visual studio is highlighted

Toolbox → You can drag and drop different controls on the form.
Form → Single unit of the application. An application may consists of multiple forms.
Solution explorer → Lists all the projects inside the current application. It also lists different files present inside the project(s).
Property window → List the properties of the form and its contents. In the above figure the property window shows the properties of form.

WYSIWYG View

WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. It means a system in which content displayed on screen during editing is same in appearance when the system is displayed as finished product (More information about WYSIWYG is given in the next section)

Design View

Design view displays the content of the form in WYSIWYG view. You can add or delete the form contents i.e. controls from design view.

Adding Controls On Form

To add a control on the form click on the All Windows Forms tab in toolbox. Once you click on it, the tab expands and you can see the list of controls which you can drag on the form.

Picture showing the different categories of controls in the toolbar

Click to Enlarge

To drag a control on the form

Left click on the control.
Hold the left click
Move the cursor on the form.
Release the mouse.

Picture showing how to drag and drop the tool in visual studio

Click to Enlarge

Run The Program

To run the program press F5 or click on play button in visual studio

Picture showing the run icon in the visual studio

Click to Enlarge

Output

Picture showing your first windows forms program using visual studio

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Thursday, February 2, 2012

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