Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Unleashed

Planning the User Interface

Before you embark on the design process in Visual Studio, it is probably a decent idea to first draft a mock-up of the form’s general landscape. This can be a simple pen and paper sketch; what we are looking for is a simple, rough blueprint for the application.

As a sample scenario, consider a Windows Forms application written for Contoso customer service representatives. The application needs to expose a hierarchical list of orders placed with Contoso, and it should enable the reps to search on orders and edit data.

Preliminary Design

A few basic components have been established as de facto standards for a Windows form: Menus, toolbars, and status bars are all standard fare and can certainly be leveraged within this ...