): IDE is a term commonly used in the
programming world to describe the interface and environment that we use to
create our applications. It is called integrated because we can access
virtually all of the development tools that we need from one screen called an interface.
The IDE is also commonly referred to as the design environment, or the program.
The Visual Basic
IDE is made up of a number of components
The Menu Bar
The
menu bar contains menu commands that you have probably seen in other
Windows-based applications—such as File, Edit, View, Tools, Window, Help, and
others. The menu bar also has many other commands specific to Visual Basic—
such as Project, Format, Debug, Run, Query, Diagram, Add-Ins, and many others.
The Tool Bar
The
toolbar includes a number of clickable icons that represent various program
functions. To find out what a specific icon represents on the menu bar, simply
move your mouse cursor over the icon and pause for a moment to see a small
balloon containing a description.
Tool Box
Toolbox
is a popular facility for aiding you in designing graphical programs. It
contains clickable icons that represent objects you can place on your form.
Some of the toolbox’s objects that you will use in the light bulb program are
the image, label, frame, option button, and command button control.
The Form Layout Window
The
Form Layout window allows you to position forms relative to your screen’s size.
Project Window
The Project
window is use to manage your application's components. The Project window
enables you to manage all those components and bring the component you want to
work with to the editing area where you can work on it. The Project window
lists its components in a tree-structured listing. Related objects appear
together. You can expand or shrink the details by clicking the plus or minus
signs that appear next to object groups. Each item in the Project window has
both a project name and a filename. In Visual Basic, you can assign names to
objects, such as forms and modules.
Properties
Window
The Properties
Window is docked under the Project Explorer window. The Properties Window
exposes the various characteristics of selected objects. Each and every form in
an application is considered an object. Now, each object in Visual Basic has characteristics
such as color and size. Other characteristics affect not just the appearance of
the object but the way it behaves too. All these characteristics of an object
are called its properties. Thus, a form has properties and any controls placed
on it will have properties too. All of these properties are displayed in the
Properties Window.
Form Window
Most of work
goes on inside the Form window. We design all our application's forms, which
are the background windows that your users see, in the central editing area where
the Form window appears. You can resize the Form window to make the windows you
create in your applications as large or small as needed.
Code Editor Window - If you select Code
View within the Project Window, or if you double-click on a control icon within
the Form Design Window, the Code Editor Window will open, displaying the Visual
Basic code associated with a particular object. You use the Code Editor Window to
write, display, and edit Visual Basic code. You can open as many code editor
windows as you have modules, so you can easily view the code in different forms
or modules, and copy and paste between them. The code editor window contains
two list boxes at the top of the window. The leftmost list box is the Object Listbox,
it allows you to select the event procedures associated with a particular object
(e.g. command button, form, label, textbox, etc.). The rightmost Listbox is
called the Procedure Listbox, for the current object, it allows you to select
the event procedure associated with a particular type of event (e.g. Click,
DragDrop, KeyDown, MouseDown, etc.).
