The Basics:

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The above shows a typical opening screen for a Visual Basic project. The screen above shows the toolbox, which is used to design forms, a blank form, and the project details window. A Visual Basic project consists of a number of forms, modules and custom controls. Your initial screen may be different depending on which non-standard controls are loaded.

Forms are the main part of the project, used to design windows that serve as an interface to your program. Forms are used to display such things as labels, instructions, graphics and controls as well as allowing data entry for your program.

Controls are objects such as boxes, buttons, and labels that are drawn on a form to get data input or to display output.

The Toolbox displays all the standard Visual Basic controls plus any custom controls you may have added to your project.

You set the properties of forms and controls using the properties window. This changes values such as caption, name, font, colour, size and position.

The Visual Basic Toolbar provides shortcuts for commonly used operations.

Moving and Resizing :

Any object on a form and the form itself can be moved and resized using the mouse. To move a form, click on the title bar of the form, hold down the left mouse button and drag the form to its new position. To resize a form, similary drag the bottom right hand corner of the form using the mouse. (You can also drag the right hand side or bottom of the form for horizontal or vertical resizing.)

To move an object on a form, click on the object, hold down the left mouse button and drag the object to its new position. To resize, click on the object and drag any of the "handles" (black dots) with the mouse.

Task One :

1. Open a New Project (File Menu, New Project).

2. Click on the Label Icon in the Toolbox.

3. Move to the Form, hold down the left mouse button, drag to the right and down to produce a label box (see above).

4. Select the label.

5. Click on the Caption property (in the Properties window) and change the caption to 'Item'.

6. Repeat steps 2 to 4 to produce labels for 'Price', 'Quantity' and 'Total Price'.

7. Click on the Text Box icon in the Toolbox.

8. Move to the Form, hold down the left mouse button, drag to the right and down to produce a text box (see above).

9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 to produce three other text boxes.

10. Click on the Command Button icon in the Toolbox.

11. Move to the Form, hold down the left mouse button, drag to the right and down to produce a command button (see above).

12. In the properties window, click on the Caption property and change the caption to Calculate.

13. Repeat steps 10 to 12 to produce a command button with the caption 'Exit'.

14. Practice moving and resizing the form and its controls to allow ease of editing and to align the form and its controls.

15. Choose 'Start' from the 'Run' menu or click on the Start Program shortcut on the toolbar.

16. Move around the form using the mouse, TAB key and arrow keys. Type some information into the text boxes.

17. Chose 'End' from the 'Run' menu or click on the Stop Program shortcut on the toolbar.

18. Choose 'Save Project' form the File menu. You will be asked to give a name for the new form and the new project you've created. Call them both STOCK (STOCK.FRM and STOCK.VBP).

Congratiulations, you've written your first Visual Basic programme!!! At the moment, it contains no code, doesn't actually do anything with the data eneterd and the buttons don't work, but we'll change that later

Excercise One:

Open new projects for each of the following forms, create the objects shown and save with the names given.

Form name:	ADDRESS.FRM
Project name:	ADDRESS.VBP