Building a Better Window with System.Windows.Forms

Summary

This chapter introduced the fine art of building a UI with the types contained in the System. Windows. Forms namespace. You began by building a number of applications by hand, and you learned along the way that at a minimum, a GUI application needs a class that derives from Form and a Main() method that invokes Application. Run().

During the course of this chapter, you learned how to build topmost menus (and pop-up menus) and how to respond to a number of menu events. You also came to understand how to further enhance your Form types using toolbars and status bars. As you have seen, .NET 2.0 prefers to build such UI elements using MenuStrips, ToolStrips, and StatusStrips rather than the older .NET 1.x MainMenu, ToolBar, and StatusBar types (although these deprecated types are still supported). Finally, this chapter wrapped up by illustrating how to construct MDI applications using Windows Forms.