Forms
Start VB, after it's done loading, you should see the screen "New Project" (unless you have disabled that screen), and select Standard.EXE. After doing so you will be brought to VB's development environment. In the middle you have a gray window, which is what you will be developing on. It's called a Form (Form1 by default), on the left of that form you see a Toolbox window that has bunch of icons, which are called Controls. Controls are one of the things your project will consist of in it. To the right of "Form1" you should see two other windows, one is the Project Explorer, which holds all the forms (gray windows), and other important things we will get into later. The other window is the Properties window which holds the Form's and Control's properties in your project.
Tip: This may look confusing at first, but believe me it gets easier once you have spent a little time playing around with everything there.
The Form is where everything happens. You add controls and codes. Lets look at what the property window can do for Form1.
Properties for a Form (switching them will switch the way Form1 looks/acts etc...)
| BackColor | Switches the background color of the form, which is gray |
| BorderStyle | Determines how the form's border looks, and if it's sizable or not |
| Caption | Determines what the top of the form says, by default it says "Form1" |
| Enabled | Determines if the form is usable/not usable |
| Font | Determines the form's Font (note: you won't be able to change the form's caption font with this) |
| Icon | Determines the form's Icon, by default they have a form icon on the form |
| KeyPreview | Determines if clicking a button on the keyboard does something to the application (ex; when an app is running the user clicks the Esc button on the keyboard, it closes the app) which requires codes |
| MaxButton | Determines if you want the form to be able to be maximized with the maximize button |
| MinButton | Determines if you want the form to have a minimize button |
| MDIChild | Determines if this form will be inside of a MDI Parent form... Like AOL |
| MousePointer | What the mouse pointer looks like over the form |
| ShowInTaskbar | Determines if your program shows in the windows taskbar like VB for example, and most other applications running in Windows |
| StartUpPosition | Where the form starts up at run time, which you can also position in the "Form Layout" window |
| Visible | Determines if the form is visible or not |
These are the most important properties of a form, once you get a hold of these you can and will relate better to many control's properties...
Tip: Codes are programming statements that make your program actually do something
Tip: Run time is when the program is actually working, to run it, in VB's menu, select Run, then click Start, to stop, select Run, then Stop
Note: After saving a project you can open it and modify it; Once VB loads and you see the New Project window select, Recent and open your project.
