Mastering Microsoft® Visual Basic® 2008

Chapter 18. Drawing and Painting with Visual Basic 2008

Some of the most interesting and fun parts of a programming language are its graphics elements. In general, graphics fall into two major categories: vector and bitmap. Vector graphics are images generated by graphics methods such as DrawLine and DrawEllipse. The drawing you create is based on mathematical descriptions of the various shapes. Bitmap graphics are images made up of pixels arranged in rows and columns. Each pixel is represented by a Long numeric value, which is the pixel's color. The difference between vector and bitmap graphics is that vector graphics aren't tied to a specific monitor resolution; that is, they can be displayed at various resolutions. Bitmap graphics, on the other ...