22.6. Targeted Access to Resources with My.Resources

Resource files save application elements such as bitmaps, icons, strings, and so on in separate files. You can read these elements from the resource files by using My.Resources at runtime.

The advantage of using such external resources is that it makes applications more flexible—you can update the resources without having to alter the actual application code. For example, consider the localization feature of a Microsoft Office program such as Microsoft Word into another language. If the text for each application message were hard coded, Microsoft would need to provide the entire source code to translators, who would then have to identify translatable text embedded somewhere in the source. That would also result in multiple versions of the source code, each of which would need to be updated for changes or bug fixes—an effort which is simply unsupportable for larger projects.