Visual C# 2010 Recipes (PDF)

are writing the Windows equivalent of Hello World or the next version of Microsoft Word, including the following:

• For each form you need in your application, create a class that extends the System.Windows.Forms.Form class.

• In each of your form classes, declare members that represent the controls that will be on that form, such as buttons, labels, lists, and text boxes. These members should be declared private or at least protected so that other program elements cannot access them directly. If you need to expose the methods or properties of these controls, implement the necessary members in your form class, providing indirect and controlled access to the contained controls.

• Declare methods in your form class that will handle events raised by the controls contained by the form, such as button clicks or key presses when a text box is the active control. These methods should be private or protected and follow the standard .NET event pattern (described in recipe 13-11). It’s in these methods (or methods called by these methods) where you will define the bulk of your application’s functionality.

• Declare a constructor for your form class that instantiates each of the form’s controls and configures their initial state (size, color, position, content, and so on). The constructor should also wire up the appropriate event handler methods of your class to the events of each control.
• Declare a static method named Main—usually as a member of your application’s main form class. This method is the entry point for your application, and it can have the same signatures as those mentioned in recipe 1-1.

In the Main method, call Application.EnableVisualStyles to allow Windows theme support, create an instance of your application’s main form, and pass it as an argument to the static Application.Run method. The Run method makes your main form visible and starts a standard Windows message loop on the current thread, which passes the user input (key presses, mouse clicks, and so on) to your application form as events."