From now on, we're going to be creating Windows Applications, rather than Console
Applications. Windows Applications make use of something called a
Form.
The Form is blank at first. You then add control to your form, things like buttons,
text boxes, menus, check boxes, radio buttons, etc. To get your first look at
a Windows Form, do the following.
If you still have your Console Application open from the previous section,
click
File from the menu bar at the top of Visual C# Express. From the
File menu, click on
Close Solution.
To create your first Windows form project, click the File menu again. This
time, select
New Project from the menu. When you do, you'll see the New
Project dialogue box again. This one in C# 2010:
In Visual Studio Express 2012/13, click Visual C#, under
Templates on the
left:
In all versions, select
Windows Forms Application (or Windows Application
in earlier versions) from the available templates. Keep the Name on the default
of
WindowsFormsApplication1 and then click OK.
When you click OK, a new Windows Application project will be created for you:
The obvious difference from the Console Application you created in the previous
section is the blank Form in the main window. Notice the
Toolbox, though,
on the left hand side. We'll be adding controls from the Toolbox to that blank
Form1 you can see in the image above.
If you can't see the Toolbox, you may just see the Tab, as in the following
image:
In C# 2010 and 2013, your screen will look like this (version 2012 is similar
but less colourful):
If your screen looks like the one above, move your mouse over to the Toolbox
tab. It will expand to look like the first one. If you want to permanently display
the Toolbox, click on the pin symbol:
Notice the Solution Explorer on the right side of your screen. (If you can't
see the Solution Explorer, click its entry on the View menu at the top of Visual
C# Express.) If you compare it with the Solution Explorer when you created your
Console Application, you'll see there's only one difference - the Form.
We still have the Properties, the References and the Program.cs file. Double
click the Program.cs file to open it, and you'll see some familiar code:
And here's the code from the Console Application:
Both have the same
using lines, a
namespace, a class called
Program,
and a
Main Method.
The Main Method is the entry point for your programme. The code between the
curly brackets of Main will get executed when the programme first starts. The
last line in the
WindowsApplication1 code above is the one that Runs
Form1 when the Application starts.
You can do other things here. For example, suppose you had a programme that
connects to a server. If it finds a connection then it loads some information
from a database. In the Main Method, you could check that the server connection
is OK. If it's not, display a second form; if it's OK, then display the first
form.
But don't worry if all that code has you scratching your head. The thing to
bear in mind here is that a method called
Main starts your programme.
And
Program.cs in the Solution Explorer on the right is where the code
for Main lives.
But we won't be writing code in the Program.cs file, so we can close it. Have
a look near the top of the coding window, and you'll some tabs:
Click the X to close the tab. You should now see your form again (you may
have a Start tab as well. You can close this, if you want).
To see the window where you'll write most of your code, right click
Form1.cs
in the Solution Explorer:
The menu has options for
View Code and
View Designer. The Designer
is the Form you can see at the moment. Click
View Code from the menu
to see the following window appear (you can also press the F7 key on your keyboard
in earlier versions, and CTRL + ALT + 0 in version 2012/13):
This is the code for the Form itself. This Form (screenshot from version 2013):
The code has a lot more
using statements than before. Don't worry about
these for now. They just mean "using some code that's already been written".
The code also says
partial class Form1. It's partial because some code
is hidden from you. To see the rest of it (which we don't need to alter), click
the plus symbol next to Form1.cs in the Solution Explorer:
Now double click
Form1.Designer.cs. You'll see the following code:
Again, you see
partial class Form1, which is the rest of the code. Click
the plus symbol next to
Windows Form Designer generated code. You'll
see the following:
InitializeComponent is code (a Method) that is automatically generated
for you when you create a new Windows Application project. As you add things
like buttons and text boxes to your form, more code will be added here for you.
But you don't need to do anything in this window, so you can right click the
Form1.Designer.cs tab at the top, and click
Close from the menu.
Click back on the
Form1.cs tab at the top to see you form again. If
the tab is not there, right click Form1.cs in the Solution Explorer on the right.
From the menu, select
View Designer. Here's what you should be looking
at:
It's in Designer view that we'll be adding things like buttons and text boxes
to our form. But you can run this programme as it is. From the
Debug
menu at the top, click
Start Debugging (Or you can just press the F5
key on your keyboard.):
When you click Start Debugging, Visual C# will Build the programme first, and
then run it, if it can. If it can't run your programme you'll see error messages.
But you should see your form running on top of Visual Studio. It will have
its own Red X, and it's own minimize and maximize buttons. Click the Red X to
close your programme, and to return to Visual C# Express.
From now on, when we say Run your programme, this is what we mean: either press
F5, or click
Debug > Start Debugging.
OK, time for you to start adding things to the form, and to do a little coding!