Programming .NET Windows Applications

Form Properties

Since every form is derived from the Form class, which itself is derived from the Control class, they have all the properties of the Control and Form base classes, of which there are about one hundred. Many of the most commonly used properties are listed in Table 5-1. These properties can either be set in Visual Studio .NET at design time or set programmatically at runtime.

Table 5-1. Form properties

Property	Value type	Description
AcceptButton	IButtonControl	Gets or sets the button on a form that is clicked when the user presses Enter, irrespective of which control actually has focus.
ActiveForm	Form	Static property (shared in VB.NET) that gets the currently active form. Returns null (Nothing in VB.NET) if there is no active form.
ActiveMdiChild	Form	Gets currently active MDI child. Returns null (Nothing in VB.NET) if there is no active form. Allows operations on MDI child forms from MDI parent form, or determination if any open MDI child forms.
AutoScroll	Boolean	If set true, the default, scrollbars will automatically display if any controls are outside the form's client region.
BackColor	Color	Gets or sets the background color.
CancelButton	IButtonControl	Gets or sets the button on a form that is clicked when the user presses Escape, irrespective of which control actually has focus.
ClientSize	Size	Gets or sets the size of the area of the form excluding the borders and titlebar.
ControlBox	Boolean	Gets or sets a value indicating if the ...