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Lab 2: Windows Forms

Learning Objectives for Lab 2

After completion of today's lab, you should be able to

Windows Application versus Web Applications

Microsoft's .NET provides two toolkits for user interface design: one for Web applications and the other for Windows applications.

Recently. Microsoft is promoting a new technology for developing user interfaces

Window Applications (.NET 2.0)

Window Form applications rely on the power of the workstation (or local) computer for processing and high-performance content display.

Windows Forms

Visual Studio.NET can be used to quickly create Visual C# Window applications. Typically, inheritance is used to define a class that inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Form to create a window or dialog box visible on the GUI.

When using Visual Studio.NET's template for creating a Windows Form, a bunch of code is automatically written for you and placed behind the scene in a partial class ClassName.Designer.cs 

namespace WindowsUI
{
   partial class Form1
   {
      /// <summary>
      /// Required designer variable.
      /// </summary>
      private System.ComponentModel.IContainer components = null;

      /// <summary>
      /// Clean up any resources being used.
      /// </summary>
      /// <param name="disposing">true if managed resources should be disposed; otherwise, false.</param>
      protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
      {
         if (disposing && (components != null))
         {
            components.Dispose();
         }
         base.Dispose(disposing);
      }

      #region Windows Form Designer generated code

      /// <summary>
      /// Required method for Designer support - do not modify
      /// the contents of this method with the code editor.
      /// </summary>
      private void InitializeComponent()
      {
         this.components = new System.ComponentModel.Container();
         this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;
         this.Text = "Form1";
      }

      #endregion
   }
}

Activity 1: Create a New Project

Create a New Project called WindowsUI in Solution Lab2

  1. From the File menu, choose New > Project
  2. From the New Project dialog box, choose Visual C# Windows Application
  3. Enter WindowsUI as the project name, U:\Labs\ as the Location, and Lab2 as the solution name.
  4. Check Create directory for solution
  5. Click OK
  6. Use Visual Studio 2008's refactoring tool to change the name of the Form1.cs file to MainForm.cs

Activity 2: Using the Properties Window

Window Form

Visual Studio.NET's Designer uses the Properties Window to facilitate the initialization of properties associated with forms and controls.

Set the initial properties of MainForm

  1. Right-click the body of MainForm in design view and select Properties
  2. Change the Text property (i.e. the string that appears in the form's title bar) to Chatter Box
  3. Change the BackColor property to a light yellow
  4. Right click and download the smiley icon to your U:\Labs\Lab2\WindowsUI\ folder
  5. Change the Icon property to use the talker.ico image file
  6. Change the Form's Size property to 250 wide by 300 high
  7. Change the Form's StartPosition property to begin with the form initially centered on the screen
  8. Run your program in the debugger to test the property settings

Activity 3: Adding Window.Forms Controls

Window Controls
Window Controls

The System.Windows.Forms namespace contains hundreds of built-in classes used to implement controls and components placed on forms.

Many of these controls are available through the Designer's Toolbox

Add a Multiline TextBox, a ComboBox, and a Button controls to your form

Activity 4: Anchoring and Docking Controls

Anchoring allows you to attach a control onto one of the form's corners. Anchored controls always stay a fixed distance from the point they are bound to.

Docking allows a control to bind itself to an edge in a form. When you resize the form, the control resizes itself to fit the entire edge.

Anchor and Dock your controls

Activity 5: Adding an Event Handler

Visual Studio automates the registering of the event handler with the control's event. It also prepares the method handling signature, all you need to do is write the C# code to handle the event (harder sometimes than it sounds).

Activity: Handle the Button Click Event

Activity 6: Layout Controls

Visual Studio 2008 includes container controls that you can use to layout your controls on the form and that resize content as the screen size or user preferences change.

Activity: Experiment with the Layout controls

URL: http://www/cwu.edu /~gellenbe/446/labs/lab2.php
Author: Ed Gellenbeck, Department of Computer Science, Central Washington University, gellenbe@cwu.edu
Copyright 2006 Ed Gellenbeck, Central Washington University
Last modified: March 31, 2008