Introduction

This chapter continues our study of GUIs. We begin our discussion with menus, which present users with logically organized commands (or options). Next, we discuss how to input and display dates and times using the MonthCalendar and DateTimePicker controls. We show how to develop menus with the tools provided by Visual Studio. We also introduce LinkLabelspowerful GUI components that enable the user to visit one of several destinations, such as a file on the current machine or a Web page, by simply clicking the mouse.

We demonstrate how to manipulate a list of values via a ListBox and how to combine several checkboxes in a CheckedListBox. We also create drop-down lists using ComboBoxes and display data hierarchically with a treeView control. You will learn two other important GUI componentstab controls and multiple document interface (MDI) windows. These components enable you to create real-world programs with sophisticated GUIs.

Visual Studio provides a large set of GUI components, several of which are discussed in this (and the previous) chapter. Visual Studio also enables you to design custom controls and add those controls to the ToolBox, as we demonstrate in the last example of this chapter. The techniques presented in this chapter form the groundwork for creating more substantial GUIs and custom controls.