What are the different parts and areas of Visual Studio.NET IDE's called?

The figure below highlights various parts of the Visual Studio.NET IDE.

http://www.programmersheaven.com/articles/faraz/faq/2/image002.gif You can see the toolbox window at the left hand side (#1) and the properties window at the right hand side (#2) of the above snapshot. The toolbox allows you to add different controls to your form. Once the control is placed on the form, you can change its various properties from the Properties window. You can also change the location and size of the controls using the mouse. Event properties can be changed by switching to the Event Properties panel (#3) in the Properties Window. The Toolbox, Properties Window, Help Window, Solution Explorer Window, Class View Window, Output Window and other helping windows in Visual Studio IDE can be set for Docking and Auto hiding. Windows that are set for auto hide appears only when they get focus (e.g. they have mouse pointer over them or receive a mouse click), and hide when they lose focus. A window can be set for auto hide by the button marked #4 in the above figure. The hidden windows are always accessible through the left and right hand panes of the form designer window. The right hand pane is marked with #5 in the above figure and has got the class view, help and solution explorer windows in the hidden state. If some of these windows are not visible in your visual studio IDE, you can make them visible from the View menu on the standard menu bar.

Solution Explorer

The solution explorer presents the hierarchical view of the projects included in the current solution. It presents the detailed view of the individual projects with the contained source code files (which may be grouped into some folders), the references to the assemblies (projects or library code) used by the project and any other resource files like icons, pictures, sounds, animation, etc.

The solution explorer does not only present the view of the solution hierarchy but also allows you to customize the solution or projects settings. It allows you to add and remove existing and new projects to the solutions, add and remove the references and resource files. It also allows you to change the name of the solution, projects, folders and files, their build options, output file names and things like that.

http://www.programmersheaven.com/articles/faraz/faq/2/image003.gif

Toolbox, Properties and Class View Tabs

Now there is a single toolbox for all the Visual Studio.NET’s languages and tools. The toolbox (usually present on the left hand side) contains a number of common controls for windows, web and data applications like text box, check box, tree view, list box, menus, file open dialog, etc.

Properties Tab (usually present on the right hand side in IDE) allows you to set the properties on different controls and form without getting into code

Class View Tab shows all the classes that your project contains along with the methods and fields in tree hierarchy. This is similar to VC++ 6’s class view.

Menus in the Visual Studio .NET IDE

• File Menu: Used to create, open, save and close the project, solution or individual source files.
• Edit Menu: Used for text editing and searching in the Visual Studio source code editor.
• View Menu: Provides options for setting the visibility of different Visual Studio windows and to switch between code and designer views.
• Project Menu: Used for setting different properties of the Visual Studio Project. A Visual Studio project is a collection of files that make up a single assembly or a single object file (we will explore the concept of assemblies in coming lessons).
• Build Menu: This menu is used to compile and build the source file, project or solution. The result of a build is an executable file or a code library.
• Debug Menu: This menu provides various options related to the Visual Studio.Net Debugger. Debugging is the process of finding logical errors in the program, and a debugger helps make this proccess easier.
• Data Menu: Provides various options for Data Access in .Net
• Format Menu: Provides access to a set of useful operations for formatting the controls and their layout in the Form Designer view.
• Tools Menu: Provides the access to various useful Visual Studio.NET tools.

Form Designer The Visual Studio.NET form designer allows you to design the windows and web forms for your application’s user interface. It simplifies the task by allowing you to just drag and drop the required controls from the toolbox to the designer’s emulated form. It even sets the default properties for your controls. You can then change the properties of the form and control through the Properties Tab of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. The form designer also allows you to attach the even handlers with the controls.

Code Editor

The Visual Studio.NET Code Editor supports you in writing the code for your application. The code editor is tightly integrated with the designers. As you change the properties and add controls, the designer puts the required code in you application source code files which can be viewed using the code editor. The code editor is quite smart; it highlights the various categories of the code like keyword, constant and even the syntax and semantic errors. It provides the code completion through its intellisense; when you place dot (in C# and VB.NET) with your object references and namespaces it automatically shows the list of all available options to select from. Finally, the code editor is also used to debug the application using the integrated debugger.

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