Visual Basic

Week 1

What is Visual Basic?

• Visual Basic is an easy to learn programming language

• Can develop Windows based applications

• Visual Basic is an easy yet powerful programming language

Advantages of VB

• Simple

• Popular = lots of resources

• Many tools available on the Internet to save you some programming time

Disadvantages of VB

• Not suitable for programming sophisticated games

• Slower than other languages

Getting Started

Start New Project

Name Project

Development Environment

Getting Started (continued)

• Look at the form with the title bar Form1

• Everything you place on this form will appear in your program

• To run your program click on the Play button on the toolbar

Getting Started (continued)

• To stop the program click the form’s X button or select the Stop button on the tool bar

Properties

• Every component/object of your program has properties that determine its look and function– For Example: Font, Fore Color, Icon, Text

• To see the properties window, select View -> Properties Window from the menu bar

Properties (continued)

Properties (continued)

Changing Properties

• Change the form’s Text property

Adding Controls

• There are many control that can be added to your program– For example: buttons, text boxes, scroll bars

and more

• The controls are listed in the toolbox

ToolBox

Adding Controls

• Double Click

• Drag and Drop

• Click and Locate

Changing Properties

• Right-click on the control

• Select the control from the properties window control box

Events

• VB is an Event Driven language

• Events are actions that are taken in the program– For example: keypress, mouseover, click and

many more

• Events are coded in the Code window

Code Window

Form_Load Event

• The form load event should look like this:Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As

System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load (The beginning of the Form_Load event)This is the code that belongs to the Form_Load eventEnd Sub (The end of the Form_Load event)

Add a Message Box

• Adding a message box to the form load event

• Add MsgBox(“Hello”)

• Between the Private Sub and the End Sub statements

• Run Program

More Events

• Click the Drop-Down List that appears in the upper left corner of the code window to choose the object

More Events

• Click the Drop-Down List that appears in the upper right corner of the code window to see the events

FormClosing Event

• The FormClosing event occurs when the form is being unloaded when you click the form’s X button

• Type MsgBox("Good Bye") between the Private Sub and the End Sub statements

• Run the program

• Close the program

Command Button’s Events

• Double-click or right-click and select View Code to open the code window for the command button

• Type MsgBox("You have Clicked on the button!" ) between the Private Sub and the End Sub statements

• Run the program and click on the command button