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

Designing an Interface

It's generally best to design the user interface of a form and then add the code behind the interface that makes the form functional. The user interface for your Picture Viewer program will consist of a View Picture button, a Close button, and a PictureBox in which to display a picture.

Adding a Visible Control to a Form

Start by adding a Button control to the form. Do this by double-clicking the Button item in the toolbox. C# then creates a new button and places it in the upper-left corner of the form (see Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7 When you double-click a control in the toolbox, the control is added to the upper-left corner of the form.

Using the Properties window, set the button's properties as follows (note that you may want to change the Properties list to alphabetical, if it is not already, to make it easier to find these properties by name):

You're now going to create a button that the user can click to close the Picture Viewer program. Rather than adding a new button to the form, you're going to create a copy of the button you've already defined. To do this, right-click the button on the form and choose Copy from its shortcut menu. Next, right-click anywhere on the form and choose Paste from the form's shortcut menu. The new button appears over the button you copied, and it is selected by default. Change the properties of the new button as follows:

The last control you need to add to the form is a PictureBox control. A PictureBox has many capabilities, but its primary purpose is to show pictures—which is precisely what you'll use it for in this example. Add a new PictureBox control to the form and set its properties as follows:

After you've made these property changes, your form will look like the one in Figure 1.8. Click the Save All button on the toolbar to save your work.

Figure 1.8 An application's interface doesn't have to be complex to be useful.

Share This