Beginning Visual C# 2010

Chapter 16. Advanced Windows Forms Features

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

• How to use three common controls to create rich-looking menus, toolbars, and status bars

• How to create MDI applications

• How to create your own controls

In the previous chapter, you looked at some of the controls most commonly used in Windows application development. With controls such as these, it is possible to create impressive dialogs, but very few full-scale Windows applications have a user interface consisting solely of a single dialog. Rather, these applications use a Single Document Interface (SDI) or a Multiple Document Interface (MDI). Applications of either of these types usually make heavy use of menus and toolbars, neither of which were discussed in the previous chapter, but I'll make amends for that now.

Note

With the addition of the Windows Presentation Foundation to the .NET Framework, a few new types of Windows applications were introduced. They are examined in detail in Chapter 25.

This chapter begins where the last left off, by looking at controls, starting with the menu control and then moving on to toolbars, where you will learn how to link buttons on toolbars to specific menu items, and vice versa. Then you move on to creating SDI and MDI applications, with the focus on MDI applications because SDI applications are basically subsets of MDI applications.

So far, you've consumed only those controls that ship with the .NET Framework. As you saw, these controls are very powerful and provide ...