Chapter 4: Windows Forms

    All About Windows Forms
    All About Windows MDI Forms
    Creating Windows Applications
    Adding Controls to Forms
    Handling Events
    A Windows Form in Code
    Immediate Solutions: Setting Title Bar Text
    Adding/Removing Min/Max Buttons and Setting a Form's Border
    Setting Control Tab Order
    Setting Forms' Initial Positions
    Moving and Sizing Forms and Controls in Code
    Showing and Hiding Controls and Forms
    Using the MsgBox Function
    Using the MessageBox.Show Method
    Using the InputBox Function
    Working with Multiple Forms
    Using Properties to Communicate between Forms
    Setting the Startup Form
    Creating Multiple Document Interface (MDI) Applications
    Creating Dialog Boxes
    Creating Owned Forms
    Passing Forms to Procedures
    Minimizing/Maximizing and Enabling/Disabling Forms
    Anchoring and Docking Controls
    Adding and Removing Controls at Run Time
    Creating Always-on-Top Forms
    Using Visual Inheritance between Forms
    Handling Mouse Events
    Handling Keyboard Events
    Sending Keystrokes to Other Programs
    Beeping

Main Page

In Depth

In this chapter, we start to get visual. As you know, there are two types of forms in Visual Basic .NET—Windows forms and Web forms. This chapter is all about working with Windows forms.

There's a great deal to see about Windows forms in Visual Basic; we'll take a look at it here. We'll see how to customize forms; how to work with multiple forms; how to support the Multiple Document Interface (MDI); how to handle MDI child forms; how to use MsgBox, MessageBox, and InputBox to create message boxes and input boxes; how to create, hide, and show forms in code; how to add controls at run time; and much more. We'll begin the chapter with an overview of Visual Basic Windows forms.