Controls: The Base Class

Controls The Base Class

A control is an object with a visual interface that appears on a form and that displays information to the user. Examples of controls include buttons, labels and listboxes. Controls are also used to gather input from the user, either from the keyboard or from a pointing device such as the mouse.

There are nearly forty different controls included with the .NET Framework (not to mention numerous other components and related objects), providing a wide range of functionality. You can also derive from most controls to create specialized versions of the standard controls, or you can combine controls and even create entirely new controls. The creation of custom controls is covered in Chapter 17.