Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

Appendix G

Windows Forms Controls and Components

This appendix summarizes the standard controls and components provided by Visual Basic .NET for use by Windows Forms applications. Some of these are quite complicated, providing dozens or even hundreds of properties, methods, and events, so it would be impractical to describe them all completely here. However, it’s still worthwhile having a concise guide to the most important controls so you know which to pick for a particular task.

MORE INFORMATION

You can find information about most of these controls under the “System.Windows.Forms Namespace” topic in the MSDN help at http://msdn.microsoft.com/system.windows.forms.aspx.

Note that components inherit from the Component class and controls inherit from the Control class. Except where overridden, the components and controls inherit the properties, methods, and events defined by the Component and Control classes. Chapter 8, “Using Windows Forms Controls,” discusses some of the more useful properties, methods, and events provided by the Control class, and many of those apply to these controls as well. Appendix A, “Useful Control Properties, Methods, and Events,” summarizes the Control class’s most useful properties.

Figure G-1 shows the Visual Basic Toolbox displaying the standard Windows Forms controls.

FIGURE G-1: Visual Basic provides a large number of standard components and controls for Windows Forms.

TUNING THE TOOLBOX

You can add and remove controls from the Toolbox. ...