Designing The Visual Interface Form

Designing The Visual Interface Form

The first step in Visual Basic application is to create the forms that will be the basis for your application' s interface .It comprises of two Steps:

1. Placing Controls on the form.

2. Setting Properties of Controls at Design Time.

Placing Controls on the form:

The following method will guide you about placing controls on the form.

A window will appear when you start Visual Basic.Main window will look like that:

Select the Standard EXE from the above figure.Now you will see the following figure:

As you have read earlier above window is the main VISUAL BASIC IDE ,all application are created in the IDE.The above IDE will contain six windows:

I. Main Window

II. Form Window

III. Tool Box

IV. Property Window

V. Form Layout Window

VI. Project Explorer Window

Note That:

If any of the above is not present in the IDE then you can invoke them by selecting from view menu.

The user interface is 'drawn' in the form window.

There are two ways to place controls on a form:

1. Double-click the tool in the toolbox and it is created with a default size on the form. You can then move it or resize it.

2. Click the tool in the toolbox, and then move the Mouse pointer to the form window. The cursor changes to a crosshair.

Place the crosshair where you want the control at form by pressing the left mouse button and hold it down while dragging the cursor.

When you release the mouse button the control is drawn. This approach must be used to place controls in a frame or picture box control.

For example you have to place a textbox control to the form, follow these steps:

Select the text box control from the tool box by clicking on it. when selected it will appear like figure:

3.Click and drag within 'Form1' to place the TextBox at the form. 'Text box' control has a default text 'Text1'.

Note that:

Drag the mouse while keeping the left mouse button pressed.

Refer to figure:

So like 'Text Box' control, all other controls can be placed on the form. All have default names.

To resize a control, click the object so that it is select and sizing handles appear. Use these handles to resize the object.

Setting Properties of Controls at Design Time

Each control has properties assigned to it by default when you start a new project. There are two ways to display the properties of a control.

Þ The first way is to click on the control in the form window. Then click on the Properties Window.

Þ The second way is to first click on the Properties Window. Then select the object from the Object box in the Properties Window.

Following figure Shows the Properties Window for a new application:

A very important property for each objects is its name. The name is used by Visual Basic to refer to a particular object in code:

A convention has been established for naming Visual Basic objects. This convention is to use a three-letter prefix (depending on the object) followed by a name you assign.

A few of the prefixes are (you will see more as you progress in course):

Object Prefix Example Form Form frmWatch Command cmd cmdExit Button btn btnStart Label lbl lblStart Text Box txt txtTime Menu mnu mnuExit Check box chk chkChoice Data control dat datExample