Handling Events

Abstract

We have looked at some of the intrinsic controls in Visual Basic, but so far we have just used them to create attractive-looking user interfaces which do not do anything. All of the controls in Visual Basic not only have a set of properties, but also a set of events associated with them. When a button is clicked, or an item is selected from a list, an event occurs. If you want to take some action as a result of this type of event occurring you have to write some Visual Basic code. The Visual Basic IDE gives you a powerful but simple framework to respond to events. In this chapter we are going to look at the Visual Basic language and how to use it to write applications which are able to handle the Windows events which occur when your applications run.