SUMMARY

The Windows Forms Designer allows you to build forms for use in Windows applications. It lets you add controls to a form, and resize and move the controls. Together with the Properties window, it lets you view and modify control properties, and create event handlers to interact with the controls.

This chapter introduced the Windows Forms Designer and explained how you can take advantage of its features. Future chapters provide much more of the detail necessary for building forms. Chapter 7, “Selecting Windows Forms Controls,” and Chapter 8, “Using Windows Forms Controls,” provide more information about the kinds of controls you can use with the Windows Forms Designer. Chapter 9, “Windows Forms,” says a lot more about how Windows Forms work and what you can do with them.

There are other ways to build applications that have user interfaces that run on the computer, however. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) lets you build applications that have a very different look and feel. Certain kinds of WPF applications can also run in the Windows 8 Metro interface, something that Windows Forms applications cannot do.

Chapter 4, “WPF Designer,” describes the designer that you use to build Windows Presentation Foundation applications. In some ways it is similar to the Windows Forms Designer. For example, you use the Toolbox to place controls on the form, and you use the Properties window to view and edit control properties much as you do when using the Windows Forms Designer. In other ways the two designers are quite different, however, so you’ll need the information in Chapter 4 if you want to build WPF applications.