Special Edition Using Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET

Designing Effective Forms

Forms are the building blocks of your user interface. Although the process of designing a form in Visual Basic is simple, doing it well is not very easy. Good form design involves more than just adding controls and writing code. To make a well-designed form, you should understand the form’s purpose, how it is going to be used, when it is going to be used, and its relationship with the rest of the program. In addition, within your application, you may have several forms, each of which must be displayed when appropriate. Some users take advantage of the multitasking freedom offered by Windows, whereas others tend to use only one application at a time. Keep this point in mind when you’re designing a user interface (UI): ...