Making List Boxes Scroll Horizontally (Multicolumn List Boxes)

It's a pity that there's so little vertical space for the list box in your new program's layout—the user can view only 4 of the more than 40 items in the list box at once. Can't you make a list box work horizontally instead of vertically?

You sure can, if you set the MultiColumn property of a list box to True, giving it multiple columns. Here's how that looks in code, where I'm creating a multicolumn list box:

Dim ListBox1 As ListBox

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
    ListBox1 = New ListBox()
    ListBox1.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(270, 100)
    ListBox1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(10, 40)
    Me.Controls.Add(ListBox1)
    ListBox1.MultiColumn = True

    ListBox1.BeginUpdate()
    Dim intLoopIndex As Integer
    For intLoopIndex = 1 To 20
        ListBox1.Items.Add("Item " & intLoopIndex.ToString())
    Next intLoopIndex
    ListBox1.EndUpdate()
End Sub

What does this list box look like? See the next topic, where I'm also making this list box support multiple selections.