Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++® 2005

Chapter 21. Applications Using Windows Forms

In this chapter, you will learn how you put together the GUI for a Windows Forms application. You will also learn how you support user interaction with the controls that you use. You'll do this by assembling a single application incrementally throughout the chapter so by the end of the chapter you'll have a Windows Forms program of a reasonable size.

In this chapter, you'll learn:

• How to build an application GUI interactively using the Form Design capability:

• How to add controls to a form

• How to add event handlers for controls

Understanding Windows Forms

Windows Forms is a facility for creating Windows applications that execute with the CLR. A form is a window that is the basis for an application window or a dialog window to which you can add other controls that the user can interact with. Visual C++ 2005 comes with a standard set of more than 60 controls that you can use with a form. Because there is a very large number of controls, you'll get to grips only with a representative sample in this book, but that should give you enough of an idea of how they are used to explore the others for yourself. Many of the standard controls provide a straightforward interactive function, such as Button controls that represent buttons to be clicked or TextBox controls that allow text to be entered. Some of the standard controls are containers, which means that they are controls that can contain other controls. For example, a GroupBox control can contain ...