Introduction

.Net

Framework

The .NET Framework is a software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for the .NET Framework execute in a software environment (as contrasted to hardware environment), known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. The class library and the CLR together constitute the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework's Base Class Library provides user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. Programmers produce software by combining their own source code with the .NET Framework and other libraries. The .NET Framework is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. Microsoft also produces an integrated development environment largely for .NET software called Visual Studio.

New Window-Based Form Control

Datagrid View Control

The DataGridView control provides a powerful and flexible way to display data in a tabular format. You can use theDataGridView control to show read-only views of a small amount of data, or you can scale it to show editable views of very large sets of data. You can extend the DataGridView control in a number of ways to build custom behaviors into your applications. For example, you can programmatically specify your own sorting algorithms, and you can create your own types of cells. You can easily customize the appearance of the DataGridView control by choosing among several properties. Many types of data stores can be used as a data source, or the DataGridView control can operate with no data source bound to it.

Toolstrip Control
The Windows Forms Toolstrip control and its associated classes provide a common framework for combining user interface elements into toolbars, status bars, and menus. Toolstrip controls offer a rich design-time experience that includes in-place activation and editing, custom layout, and rafting, which is the ability of toolbars to share horizontal or vertical space. Although Toolstrip replaces and adds functionality to the control in previous versions, ToolBar is retained for both backward compatibility and future use if desired.

 Maskedtextbox Control
The TextBox control is the most used control in window program. It also cause a lot of problems either from QA or user, because the invalid data that were entered. Using masked control will solve these problems and save a lot of time for developer. This masked intelligent user control enhances the function of TextBox control, which can mask the Date, IP Address, SSN, Phone number, digit, decimal and check the validation, automatically set delimit location. The property Masked is set to None by default and the control works like a normal TextBox control.

SoundPlayer Class
The SoundPlayer class enables you to easily include sounds in your applications. The SoundPlayer class can play sound files in the .wav format, either from a resource or from UNC or HTTP locations. Additionally, the SoundPlayer class enables you to load or play sounds asynchronously.You can also use the SystemSounds class to play common system sounds, including a beep.

Splitcontainer control
The Windows Forms Splitcontainer control can be thought of as a composite; it is two panels separated by a movable bar. When the mouse pointer is over the bar, the pointer changes shape to show that the bar is movable.

Important In the Toolbox, SplitContainer control replaces the Splitter control that was there in the previous version of Visual Studio. The SplitContainer control is much preferred over the Splitter control. The Splitter class is still included in the .NET Framework for compatibility with existing applications, but we strongly encourage you to use the SplitContainer control for new projects.

With the Splitcontainer control, you can create complex user interfaces; often, a selection in one panel determines what objects are shown in the other panel. This arrangement is very effective for displaying and browsing information. Having two panels lets you aggregate information in areas, and the bar, or "splitter," makes it easy for users to resize the panels.

List View Control

The Windows Forms ListView control displays a list of items with icons. You can use a list view to create a user interface like the right pane of Windows Explorer. The control has four view modes: LargeIcon, SmallIcon, List, and Details. What You Can Do with the ListView Control The LargeIcon mode displays large icons next to the item text; the items appear in multiple columns if the control is large enough. The SmallIcon mode is the same except that it displays small icons. The List mode displays small icons but is always in a single column. The Details mode displays items in multiple columns.

Toolstip Control
Tooltips appear automatically, or pop up, when the user pauses the mouse pointer over a tool or some other UI element. The tooltip appears near the pointer and disappears when the user clicks a mouse button, moves the pointer away from the tool, or simply waits for a few seconds. The tooltip control in the following illustration displays information about a file on the Windows desktop. As you move the mouse over the illustration, you should also see a live tooltip that contains descriptive text.

 ComboBox
The Windows Forms Combobox control is used to display data in a drop-down combo box. By default, the ComboBoxcontrol appears in two parts: the top part is a text box that allows the user to type a list item. The second part is a list box that displays a list of items from which the user can select one. The SelectedIndex property returns an integer value that corresponds to the selected list item. You can programmatically change the selected item by changing the SelectedIndex value in code; the corresponding item in the list will appear in the text box portion of the combo box. If no item is selected, the SelectedIndex value is -1. If the first item in the list is selected, then the SelectedIndex value is 0. The SelectedItem property is similar to SelectedIndex , but returns the item itself, usually a string value. The Count property reflects the number of items in the list, and the value of the Count property is always one more than the largest possible SelectedIndex value because SelectedIndex is zero-based. To add or delete items in a ComboBox control, use the Add, Insert,Clear or Remove method. Alternatively, you can add items to the list by using the Items property in the designer.

Listbox Control
Creates a list box that displays a list of items that you can select one or more items from. A list box is similar to a combo box; however, a combo box initially displays a single item.

 Menuitem Control
A menu control allows hierarchal organization of elements associated with commands and event handlers. In a typical Windows application, a menu bar contains several menu items (such as File, Edit, and Window), and each menu item displays a menu. A menu contains a collection of menu items (such as New, Open, and Close), which can be expanded to display additional menu items or perform a specific action when clicked.

Tab Control
A tab control is analogous to the dividers in a notebook or the labels in a file cabinet. By using a tab control, an application can define multiple pages for the same area of a window or dialog box. Each page consists of a certain type of information or a group of controls that the application displays when the user selects the corresponding tab. The following screen shot shows a simple tab control that contains tabs for days of the week. The Tuesday tab has been selected.

 Webbrowser Control
The WebBrowser control provides a managed wrapper for the WebBrowser ActiveX control. The managed wrapper lets you display Web pages in your Windows Forms client applications. You can use the WebBrowser control to duplicate Internet Explorer Web browsing functionality in your application or you can disable default Internet Explorer functionality and use the control as a simple HTML document viewer. You can also use the control to add DHTML-based user interface elements to your form and hide the fact that they are hosted in the WebBrowser control. This approach lets you seamlessly combine Web controls with Windows Forms controls in a single application.

Flowlayoutpanel Control
The FlowLayoutPanel control arranges its contents in a horizontal or vertical flow direction. You can wrap the control's contents from one row to the next, or from one column to the next. Alternately, you can clip instead of wrap its contents. You can specify the flow direction by setting the value of the FlowDirection property. The FlowLayoutPanel control correctly reverses its flow direction in Right-to-Left (RTL) layouts. You can also specify whether the FlowLayoutPanel control's contents are wrapped or clipped by setting the value of the WrapContents property. The FlowLayoutPanel control automatically sizes to its contents when you set the AutoSize property to true. It also provides a FlowBreak property to its child controls. Setting the value of the FlowBreak property to true causes theFlowLayoutPanel control to stop laying out controls in the current flow direction and wrap to the next row or column. Any Windows Forms control can be a child of the FlowLayoutPanel control, including other instances of FlowLayoutPanel.With this capability, you can construct sophisticated layouts that adapt to your form's dimensions at run time

 TableLayoutPanel Control
The TableLayoutPanel control arranges its contents in a grid. Because the layout is performed both at design time and run time, it can change dynamically as the application environment changes. This gives the controls in the panel the ability to proportionally resize, so they can respond to changes such as the parent control resizing or text length changing due to localization. Any Windows Forms control can be a child of the TableLayoutPanel control, including other instances ofTableLayoutPanel. This allows you to construct sophisticated layouts that adapt to changes at run time. The TableLayoutPanel control can expand to accommodate new controls when they are added, depending on the value of the RowCount, ColumnCount, and GrowStyle properties. Setting either the RowCount or ColumnCount property to a value of 0 specifies that the TableLayoutPanel will be unbound in the corresponding direction. You can also control the direction of expansion (horizontal or vertical) after the TableLayoutPanel control is full of child controls. By default, the TableLayoutPanel control expands downward by adding rows. If you want rows and columns that behave differently from the default behavior, you can control the properties of rows and columns by using the RowStyles and ColumnStyles properties. You can set the properties of rows or columns individually.

Background Worker Component

The BackgroundWorker component gives you the ability to execute timeconsuming operations asynchronously ("in the background"), on a thread different from your application's main UI thread. To use a BackgroundWorker you simply tell it what time-consuming worker method to execute in the background, and then you call the RunWorkerAsync method. Your calling thread continues to run normally while the worker method runs asynchronously. When the method is finished, the BackgroundWorker alerts the calling thread by firing the RunWorkerCompleted event, which optionally contains the results of the operation.