Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers (2nd Edition)

14.15. Wrap-Up

Many of today's commercial applications provide GUIs that are easy to use and manipulate. The demand for user-friendly GUIs makes sophisticated GUI design an essential programming skill. Visual Studio's IDE makes GUI development quick and easy. In Chapter 13, we presented basic GUI development techniques. In Chapter 14, we demonstrated how to create menus that provide users easy access to an application's functionality. You learned the DateTimePicker and MonthCalendar controls, which allow users to input date and time values. We used LinkLabels to link the user to an application or a Web page. You used several controls that provide lists of data to the userListBoxes, CheckedListBoxes and ListViews. We used the ComboBox control to create drop-down lists, and the treeView control to display data in hierarchical form. We then introduced complex GUIs that use tabbed windows and multiple document interfaces. The chapter concluded with demonstrations of visual inheritance and creating custom controls.

The next chapter explores multithreading, which enables you to create applications in which several activities can proceed in parallel.