Part I: The Visual Studio IDE and Controls

The lessons in this section of the book explain how to use the Visual Studio (VS) integrated development environment (IDE). They explain how to use the IDE to create forms, place controls on the forms, and set control properties. These lessons describe some of Visual Basic's most useful controls and give you practice using them.

You can do practically all of this in the IDE without writing a single line of code! That makes Visual Studio a great environment for rapid prototyping. You can build a form, add controls, and run the program to see what it looks like without ever creating a variable, declaring a procedure, or getting stuck in an infinite loop.

The lessons in this section explain how to get that far. A few of these lessons show how to add a line or two of code to a form to make it a bit more responsive, but for now the focus is on using the IDE to build forms and controls. Writing code (and fixing the inevitable bugs) comes later.

• Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Visual Studio IDE

• Lesson 2: Creating Controls

• Lesson 3: Making Controls Arrange Themselves

• Lesson 4: Handling Events

• Lesson 5: Making Menus

• Lesson 6: Making Tool Strips and Status Strips

• Lesson 7: Using RichTextBoxes

• Lesson 8: Using Standard Dialogs

• Lesson 9: Creating and Displaying New Forms

• Lesson 10: Building Custom Dialogs