Visual Studio 2013 Lesson 2: Building the Interface1- Customizing the Form

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As Visual Studio 2013 is a GUI-based programming language, the first step in developing an application is to build a graphical user interface. To build a graphical user interface, you need to add controls from the toolbox to the form and then customize their properties. Note that the the default form is also a control by itself and you can change its properties first before adding additional controls. After adding controls to the form, you then need to write code for all the controls so that they can response to events triggered by the user’s actions such as clicking the mouse. Therefore, Visual Studio 2013 is also an event-driven programming language. We will learn more about the concept of event-driven programming and coding in later lessons.

2.1 Changing the Properties of the Default-Form using the Properties Window

When you start a new Visual Studio 2013 project, the IDE will display the default form along with the Solution Explorer window and the Properties window for the form as shown in Figure 2.1

Figure 2.1: Initial VB2013 IDE

The properties window displays all properties related to Form1 and their corresponding attributes or values. You can change the name of the form, the title of the form, the background color, the foreground color , the size and more. Now customize the following properties:

The output interface is shown in Figure 2.2. Notice that the title has been changed from Form1 to My First Program, background changed to blue color and the window cannot be maximized.

Figure 2.2

2.2 Changing the Properties of the Default-Form at Run-Time

You can also change the properties of the form at run-time by writing the relevant codes. The default form is an object and an instant of the form can be denoted by the name Me. The property of the object can be defined by specifying the object’s name followed by a dot or period:

ObjectName.property

For example, we can set the background of the form to blue using the following code

Me.BackColor=Color.Blue

To achieve the same interface as in Figure 2.2, type in the following code by clicking the form to enter the code window:

Public Class Form1

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

Me.Text = “My First VB2013 Program”

Me.BackColor = Color.Blue

Me.MaximizeBox=False

Me.MinimizeBox = True

End Sub

End Class

Property	Value
Name	MyForm
Text	My First Program
BackColor	Blue
MaximizeBox	False