Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours

By James Foxall and Wendy Haro-Chun

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Audience and Organization
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Onward and Upward!
  • Part I. The Visual Studio Environment
  • Hour 1. A C# Programming Tour
    • Starting C#
    • Creating a New Project
    • Understanding the C# Environment
    • Changing the Characteristics of Objects
    • Naming Objects
    • Setting the Text Property of the Form
    • Giving the Form an Icon
    • Changing the Size of the Form
    • Adding Controls to a Form
    • Designing an Interface
    • Adding an Invisible Control to a Form
    • Coding an Interface
    • Running a Project
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
  • Hour 3. Understanding Objects and Collections
  • Hour 4. Understanding Events
  • Part II. Building a User Interface
  • Hour 5. Building FormsPart I
  • Hour 6. Building FormsPart II
  • Hour 7. Working with the Traditional Controls
  • Hour 8. Advanced Controls
  • Hour 9. Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
  • Hour 10. Drawing and Printing
  • Part III. Making Things HappenProgramming!
  • Hour 11. Creating and Calling Methods
  • Hour 12. Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays
  • Hour 13. Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments
  • Hour 14. Making Decisions in C# Code
  • Hour 15. Looping for Efficiency
  • Hour 16. Debugging Your Code
  • Hour 17. Designing Objects Using Classes
  • Hour 18. Interacting with Users
  • Part IV. Working with Data
  • Hour 19. Performing File Operations
  • Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
  • Hour 21. Working with a Database
  • Part V. Deploying Solutions and Beyond
  • Hour 22. Deploying a Solution
  • Hour 23. Introduction to Web Development
  • Hour 24. The 10,000-Foot View
  • Appendix A. Answers to Quizzes/Exercises

Creating a New Project

When you first start Visual Studio .NET, you're shown the Visual Studio Start Page tab within the IDE. Using this page, you can open projects created previously or create new ones (see Figure 1.1). For this quick tour, you're going to create a new Windows application, so click New Project to display the New Project dialog box shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.1 You can open existing projects or create new projects from the Visual Studio Start page.

Figure 1.2 The New Project dialog box allows you to create many types of .NET projects.

You can create many types of projects with C#, as well as with the other supported languages of the .NET platform. The New Project dialog box is used to specify the type of C# project you want to create. If the Visual C# Projects folder isn't selected, click it to display the C# project types and then make sure the Windows Application icon is selected (if it's not, click it once to select it). At the bottom of the New Project dialog box is a Name text box, in which you specify the name of the project you're creating; in the Location text box, you can enter the location in which to save the project files.

Type Picture Viewer into the Name text box to name your project. There's no need to change the location where the project files are to be saved at this time, so go ahead and create the new Windows Application project by clicking OK. C# creates the new project, complete with one form (design window) for you to begin building the interface for your application (see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 New Windows applications start with a blank form; the fun is just beginning!

Your C# environment may look different from that shown in the figures of this hour, depending on the edition of C# you're using, whether you've already played with C#, and other factors such as the resolution of your monitor. All the elements discussed in this hour, however, exist in all editions of C#. (If your IDE doesn't have a window displayed that is shown in a figure, use the View menu to display the window.)

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