IDE

The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of Visual Basic has three states (which, BTW, appear in VB's title bar):

• Design mode
• Run mode
• Debug mode

The IDE is composed of the following elements:

• Menu Bar. Includes standard pull down menus (File, Edit, View, Window, and Help), plus menus specific to Visual Basic (Project, Format, Debug, Run, Query, Diagram, Tools, and Add-Ins).
• Toolbars. Bars with icons leading to commonly used commands. Customize the Toolbar by right-clicking on it. Toolbars are either hidden, docked, or floating.
• Toolbox. Windows with icons of controls that can be used on forms. The toolboxes provides a set of tools that you use at design time to place controls on a form. Toolboxes can be customized with additional Tabs as accessed by its Context Menu
• Project Explorer Window. An explorer window that lists modules in the current project.
• Properties Window. A list of the property settings for the selected object.
• Object Browser. An explorer window that lists libraries and objects (along with their methods, properties, and events) available to the project.
• Form Designer. A window to view and modify forms. Each form has its own Form Designer.
• Code Editor Window. A window to view and edit code.
• Form Layout Window. A window that allows you to graphically position the form as it would appear on the screen.
• Immediate, Locals, and Watch Windows. Windows used in debugging.
• Context Menus. Displayed when right-clicked on different items. These are menus of shortcuts to frequently performed actions.
• Miscellaneous. Additional IDE features can be accessed with the Add-In Pull down Menu. A common add-in is Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, which is used for enterprise team development.

Context applicable help is available with F1 on the keyboard. (This assumes the MSDN Library is properly installed.)

Page Modified: (Hand noted: 2007-09-20 19:58:51Z) (Auto noted: 2010-12-24 22:49:15Z)