Programming .NET Windows Applications

Form Properties

Every form and dialog box is derived from the Form class, which itself is derived from the Control class. Therefore, they share the approximately 100 properties of the Control and Form base classes. Table 5-1 listed many of the most commonly used form properties.

While all of the form properties can be used with either dialog boxes or normal forms, either modal or modeless, several properties are often used to create the "dialog box" look and otherwise control the appearance and behavior of the form. They include those shown in Table 6-1, extracted from Table 5-1 in Chapter 5.

Table 6-1. Form properties often used with dialog boxes

Property	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.
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.
ControlBox	Boolean	Gets or sets a value indicating if the system menu can be displayed and if the Close button (X) is displayed on the right end of the titlebar. The system menu is exposed by clicking on the icon in the titlebar if the Icon property is set, or by right-clicking on the titlebar if the Icon property is not set. Default is true.
DialogResult	DialogResult	Gets or sets the return value from a form or dialog box displayed modally. ...