The book „C++ mit Visual Studio 2019 und Windows Forms-Anwendungen“

The following is a brief excerpt from my book (in German)
which is still up to date with Visual Studio 2022. All examples and projects can be created and compiled in Visual Studio 2022 as in Visual Studio 2019.

Installing Visual Studio for Windows Forms Projects

In order to create Windows Forms projects in Visual Studio, particular components must be installed during the installation of Visual Studio. If this was forgotten during the installation, start the Visual Studio Installer either under Windows|Start

or in Visual Studio under File|New|Project|Create new project (at the end of the project list)

In the installer, check .NET desktop development, desktop development with C and C/CLI support:

Create a Windows Forms project

After restarting Visual Studio, Windows Forms projects are available under Create New Project or File|New|Project:

Click the Next button. Then you will be prompted to enter the name of the project and a directory:

After clicking the Create button, Visual Studio looks something like this:
If you now click on Form1.h in the Solution Explorer, the form is displayed:

Normally, everything is done and you can continue with the next section. However, if you get something like this

you have clicked Form1.h too fast. Close this window

and click again on Form1.h in the Solution Explorer.

Visual Programming: A first small program

Now, before we get started with our first little program, let’s rearrange Visual Studio a bit to make it easier to use.
After installing Visual Studio, the Toolbox is offered at the left margin.

To prevent the toolbox from covering the form, drag the toolbox to the frame with the Solution Explorer (press the left mouse button on the title bar of the toolbox, then move to the title bar of the Solution Explorer with the mouse button pressed and release the mouse button).
Drag the properties window analogously to the Solution Explorer.
Since we initially only need the Toolbox, Solution Explorer and Properties window, you can close all other windows here (e.g. Git Explorer, etc.). Then the right frame looks something like this:

With the Windows Forms project from Section 1.4, Visual Studio then looks like this:

Next, we will now write a first small program.
The form (here Form1) is the starting point for all Windows Forms applications. It corresponds to the window that is displayed when the program is started:

Controls from the Toolbox can be placed on a form. The Toolbox contains essentially all the controls commonly used in Windows. They are located in various groups (e.g. General Controls, Containers, etc.), which can be expanded and collapsed. Most of these controls (such as a button) are displayed on the form while the program is running. If you stop with the mouse pointer briefly on a line of the toolbox, a small hint appears with a short description:

To place an element from the toolbox on the form, simply drag it from the toolbox onto the form. Or click on it in the toolbox first and then click on the position in the form where you want the upper left corner to be.
Example: After placing a Label (line seven in Common Controls, with the capital A, a TextBox (fourth line from the bottom, labelled ab) and a Button (second line labelled ab) on the form, it looks something like this:
By playing around like this, you have already created a real Windows program – not a particularly useful one, but still. You can start it as follows:

with Debug|Start Debugging from the menu, or with F5 from any window in Visual Studio or by starting the exe file generated by the compiler.
This program already has many features that you would expect from a Windows program: You can move it with the mouse, resize and close it.
Do not forget to close your program before you continue editing it. As long as the program is still running, you cannot restart the compiler or modify the form.
This way of programming is called visual programming. While conventional programming means developing a program solely by writing instructions (text) in a programming language, visual programming means composing it wholly or in part from out-of-the-box graphical controls.
With Visual Studio, the user interface of a Windows Forms program can be designed visually. This allows you to see how the program will look later at runtime as soon as you design it. The instructions that are to take place as a response to user input (mouse clicks, etc.), on the other hand, are written conventionally in a programming language (e.g. C.

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