18-09-2012, 12:38 PM
Welcome to Visual Basic Visual Basic IDE-Interactive Development Environment
Welcome to Visual Basic.ppt (Size: 601.5 KB / Downloads: 22)
Visual Basic - The Basic Canvas
Everytime you load a VB or VBA project, you will be greeted by roughly the layout shown in Figure 1 and these five GUI tools. First, the toolbox(1) contains all the GUI elements/controls needed to create any VB form and the front end to all VB programs.
For example, after the pointer tool there is the image control, label, textbox, frame and command button as the first five of 20 standard controls which are used constantly in VB programs.
Another advanatge of these basic controls is that they fill 60-90% of all your programming needs and are automatically included in the VB runtime. It is possible to add many other Micrsoft supplied or third party components/controls to this toolbox.
Second is form(2). you can size it, color it, give it a caption ("Database Test" in this case) and fill the form with GUI controls which help your program do useful works. Putting controls on your form is as easy as clicking on the control (say the command button) in the toolbox and then dragging and sizing it on your form(see the "Exit" button on the form).
Return to VB Project Explorer
VB's Project Explorer is key navigation aid among all the forms and code that make up a Visual Basic program.
If the Project Explorer window is not showing just click the View | Project Explorer menu items (or Ctrl+R keyboard shortcut) to pop it up like in Figure on previous slide.
As you might expect the Project Explorer works very much like Windows Explorer.
There are two folders - one for all the forms used in a VB program project and another for all the modules. Modules are Visual Basic program code that can be called and used anywhere in the VB program.