Learn Visual Basic
by Lorenzo Dalla Vecchia 

 Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5                                                      LESSON 5

Forms revisited

Up to now, we always worked on the same, plain, blank form that VB creates for us, but have you ever seen a program made up of only one form? Maybe, but I think you agree with me if I say that most programs contain multiple forms.

The first thing you need to learn is that a form (that is just a control) can be of different types: resizable forms (those you already know), fixed-size forms, border-less form, dialog boxes, toolboxes. Take a look at the following pictures: you should already have seen them around Windows.

	Border-less	No caption. No border. Can't be resized.	BorderStyle = 0
	Fixed-size.	Caption with icon. Thin border. Can't be resized.	BorderStyle = 1
	Resizable	Caption with icon. Thick border. Can be resized.	BorderStyle = 2
	Dialog Box	Caption w/o icon. Thin border. Can't be resized.	BorderStyle = 3
	Fixed-size Toolbox	Small caption w/o icon. Thin border. Can't be resized.	BorderStyle = 4
	Resizable Toolbox	Small caption w/o icon. Thick border. Can be resized.	BorderStyle = 5

The BorderStyle thing on the very right of the table is the value you must set the BorderStyle property of the form to change its appearance. The BorderStyle property can only be changed at runtime, through the Properties window.

So, now that you can create many type of forms, you can have multiple forms in your program. To differentiate them, as for all controls, you use names. When you create new forms, they are given the names Form1, Form2, Form3, ... It is better to rename them something understandable.

The abbreviation for the form control is frm.

To add a new form to your program, select Add Form from the Project menu, or click the corresponding button on the toolbar.

To show a form, you use its Show method.
Example:

    frmSettings.Show

If you want the form to be modal (the user must close it to return to the program), type:

    frmSettings.Show vbModal

The above is useful for dialog boxes: you must close them to continue using the program.
To close a form, you type:

    Unload formname

To switch between forms at design time, you use the Project Explore.
Found at the right of your screen, it shows you the list of forms in your program in hierarchical format.

To select a form, click its name, and then click on one of the two buttons at the top-left: the first shows the Code View for the form, the other shows the Form View (where you can put controls on the form).

And with the above, the argument of forms is exhausted.

Modules,  code containers

In the Variables chapter I told you that the General Declarations section of a form is a "neutral area" that affects the whole form, right? Any declaration (Dim statement), sub or function you put there is accessible from anywhere within the form.
But now that we've seen how to work with multiple forms, we need an even more "neutral" area that affects the whole program. This thing is called a module.

A (standard) module is like a form without graphical interface: it is just a code container, consisting only of a General Declarations section, accessible from anywhere within your program.
Adding a module is similar to adding a form: select Add Module from the Project menu.
This is what you will see.

As you see, you can't almost distinguish it from a form code window. To know you are inside a module, look at the Project Explorer on the right: the element Module1 is selected. Also note that, when a module is selected, the Form View button (the 2nd from left) is disabled, because, as I said before, modules contain only code, not controls.

The module itself is a kind of control: when you're inside a module, look a the Properties window and you will see its only property, Name, that you can set as you do for forms. The abbreviation for the module object is mod.

So, let's make a little program with two forms and a module. Name the first form frmData and put two textboxes (txtName and txtLastName) with corresponding labels and a command button (cmdOK) on it.
Name the other form frmConfirm and put two labels (lblName and lblLastName) and two buttons (cmdConfirm and cmdBack) on it. We want the user to enter information in the first form, click OK, verify information on the second form and confirm (exit the program) or not (go back to first form).
Because we need to retain data between two forms, create a module (modVariables) to declare two String variables.

The following is the code for the module:

Public Name As String
Public LastName As String

The above two variables have a global scope (or public), as opposed to form-level scope (or private) and procedure-level scope (see the chapter about Variables). Note that this time we declared the variables with a new statement, Public: it works exactly as Dim, but expressly gives them public scope. For these reasons, Public can only be used in modules; in all other cases you will continue using Dim.
The two variables must be filled when the user clicks on the OK button on the first form. This is the code:

    Name = txtName.Text           'set 1st var with textbox data
    LastName = txtLastName.Text  'set 2nd var with textbox data
    frmConfirm.Show               'load the other form
    Unload frmData                'unload current form

The two variables are needed on the other form to update labels. Type the following into the Load event procedure of frmConfirm, executed each time the form is loaded:

    'The two global variables are valid also here
    lblName.Caption = Name           'set 1st label with var data
    lblLastName.Caption = LastName  'set 2nd label with var data

Last thing is the code for the Back button ...

    frmData.Show         'show the other form
    Unload frmConfirm   'unload current form

... and that for the Confirm button:

    End

As a conclusion, you should know that the module is not a particular type of form, but its the form a particular type of module that has graphical interface. You will often hear programmers refer to forms and modules as modules and refer to private variables such as module-level variables.

Dealing with a "project"

Now that you have all the basic knowledge about VB programming, you can start designing your very own applications.

In the First Look at VB chapter, you already learned how to create a new application. Visual Basic calls this kind of "unfinished programs", projects.
A Project is the collection of forms, modules, pictures, ... in your application.
To save the current project (your entire work!), simply select Save from the File menu in VB. The project won't be saved in a single file, but "splitted" in many parts:

• Forms - each form will generate two files: a .FRM file, containing the controls and code of the form, and a .FRX file (binary form file), containing all the pictures and icons associated with the form.
• Modules - each standard module will be saved into its own .BAS file.
• The Project - there will be a main .PRJ file, containing references to all the other parts. You will need to open this file to open your project.

So, if you move your project files, remember to copy all of them. To open your saved project, just open the project (PRJ) file and VB will load all the forms and modules associated with it.

"All OK now?" No, because your projects need an installed copy of Visual Basic to work - not a good thing, uh? If you want to distribute your applications, you must first compile them into a Windows EXE file. To do this, select the Make... command from the File menu, choose a location and click OK.
Also remember that, if you want to distribute your application, you need to create a Setup program on a set of floppy disks; don't worry, this is done automatically by Visual Basic with a program known as Package and Deployment Wizard (if you have VB6) or Application Setup Wizard (if you have VB5). You can find it in the Start Menu in the VB group.

Conclusion

So, our journey in the world of VB seems to be over... wrong! It has just begun.
Continue practice with Visual Basic and start making your own programs: you will make mistakes, but even "expert" programmers do (direct experience), and it is the best way to learn.
There are many resources that can help you:

• The VB MSDN (the online help), that contains references to controls, objects, methods, properties and a lot of examples.
• Books you can buy at your local store.
• The Internet with its great content of resources, almost the times free. Begin with the Links section of this site.
• My site :-). On this site you can find examples, tips, code, controls and, soon, more tutorials.

Goodbye for now!