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
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
    • Using the Visual Studio .NET Start Page
    • Navigating and Customizing the C# Environment
    • Adding Controls to a Form Using the Toolbox
    • Setting Object Properties Using the Properties Window
    • Managing Projects
    • Managing Project Files with the Solution Explorer
    • Getting Help
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • 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

Using the Visual Studio .NET Start Page

By default, the Visual Studio Start Page shown in Figure 2.1 is the first thing you see when you start C# (if C# isn't running, start it now). The Visual Studio Start Page is a gateway for performing tasks with C#. From this page, you can open previously edited projects, create new projects, edit your user profile, and browse information provided by Microsoft.

Figure 2.1 The Visual Studio Start Page is the default starting point for all Visual Studio programming languages, including C#.

From this page, you can have C# load the last solution you edited, show the Open Project dialog box, show the New Project dialog box, or show an empty design environment. To view or edit the startup options, choose Options from the Tools menu to display the Options dialog box shown in Figure 2.2. By default, the General section of the Environment folder is selected, which happens to contain the At Startup option.

Figure 2.2 Use the At Startup setting to control the first thing you see when C# starts.

Creating New Projects

To create new projects, click New Project on the Visual Studio Start Page. This shows the New Project dialog box shown in Figure 2.3. The Project Types list varies from machine to machine, depending on which products of the Visual Studio .NET family are installed. Of course, we're interested only in the C# Project types in this book.

Figure 2.3 Use the New Project dialog box to create C# projects from scratch.

When you create a new project, be sure to enter a name for it in the Name text box before clicking OK or double-clicking a project type icon. This ensures that the project is created with the proper path and filenames, eliminating work you would otherwise have to do to change these values later. After you specify a name, you can create the new project either by double-clicking the project type template icon or by clicking an icon once to select it and then clicking OK. After you've performed either of these actions, the New Project dialog box closes and a new project of the selected type is created.

By default, Visual Studio saves all your projects in subfolders of your My Documents folder. The hierarchy used by C# is

\My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\<Project Name>

Notice how the name you give your project is used as its folder name. This makes it easy to find the folders and files for any given project and is one reason that you should always give your projects descriptive names. You can use a path other than the default by specifying a specific path on the New Project dialog box, although you probably won't often need to do so.

Opening an Existing Project

Over time, you'll open more projects than you create. There are essentially two ways to open projects from the Visual Studio Start Page. If it's one you've recently opened, the project name will appear in a list within a rectangle in the middle of the Start Page (refer to Figure 2.1). Because the name displayed for the project is the one given when it was created, this is yet another reason to give your projects descriptive names. Clicking a project name opens the project. I'd venture to guess that you'll use this technique 95% of the time. To open a project for the first time (such as when opening sample projects), click Open Project on the Visual Studio Start Page. Clicking this link displays a standard dialog box that you can use to locate and select a project file.

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