SUMMARY

Controls form the main connection between the user and the application. They allow the application to give information to the user, and they allow the user to control the application. Controls are everywhere in practically every Windows application. Only a tiny percentage of applications that run completely in the background can do without controls.

This chapter briefly described the purposes of the standard Visual Basic controls and provided a few tips for selecting the controls appropriate for different purposes.

Even knowing all about the controls doesn’t guarantee that you can produce an adequate user interface. There’s a whole science to designing user interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use. A good design enables the user to get a job done naturally and with a minimum of wasted work. A bad interface can encumber the user and turn even a simple job into an exercise in beating the application into submission.

For more information on building usable applications, read some books on user-interface design. They explain standard interface issues and solutions. You can also learn a lot by studying other successful applications. Look at the layout of their forms and dialog boxes. You shouldn’t steal their designs outright, but you can try to understand why they arrange their controls in the ways they do. Look at applications that you like and find particularly easy to use. Compare them with applications that you find awkward and confusing.

This chapter provided an introduction to Windows Forms controls to help you decide which controls to use for different purposes. Chapter 8, “Using Windows Forms Controls,” explains in greater detail how you can use the controls that you select. It tells how to add a control to a form at design time or run time, and explains how to use a control’s properties, methods, and events.