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The Visual Designer Surface

Before we begin to build more interesting Windows applications, this first example will re-create the

previous example while leveraging the designer tools. First of all, once you create a new Windows

Forms project, you will notice that Visual Studio 2008 presents a designer surface to which you can

drag and drop any number of controls. This same designer can be used to configure the initial size

of the window, simply by resizing the form itself via the supplied grab handles (see Figure 27-5).

Figure 27-5.

The visual Forms designer

When you wish to configure the look and feel of your window (as well as any control placed on

a form), you will do so using the Properties window. As you will see over the course of this chapter,

this window can be used to assign values to properties as well as establish event handlers for a given

widget. When you have a collection of controls on the designer surface, they can be selected for

configuration using the drop-down list box mounted on the top of the Properties window.

Currently our form is devoid of content, so we only see a listing for the initial Form, which has

been given a default name of Form1 as shown in the read-only (Name) property (see Figure 27-6).

Figure 27-6.

The Properties window can be used to set properties and handle events.