Chapter Fourteen. GUI Programming: Windows Forms

The applications we have worked on thus far have had text-based user interfaces. Such interfaces are often the most suitable and easy to use. However, the graphical user interface (GUI) has proved to be very popular and convenient for most users. The .NET Framework offers a wide set of classes that encapsulate windows and graphics functionality, are very easy to use, and are accessible by all .NET-compliant objects. This means that we can use PerlNET to develop graphical applications as easily as we can text-based analogues. First, we discuss the importance of GUI and learn how to create a simple window. Then, we enrich our application with different graphical controls: textboxes, buttons, and so on. Next, we show how to handle user interaction through event-handling mechanisms. Finally, we show how to work with a ListBox control to handle lists in a GUI application and develop a GUI for the stock management case study.