Precision Form Design

Developers will have an unprecedented level of control and productivity when designing the look and feel of their Windows Forms applications. Features such as the In-Place Menu Editor, Control Anchoring, Control Docking, and many new controls enable a higher level of power and precision for developers building rich Windows-based user interfaces.

With the In-Place Menu Editor, developers can quickly and easily add menus to a form, modify them, and view how they look without having to run the application. Controls on the form are more effective with Control Anchoring, enabling a form to automatically resize controls as a user resizes the form. With Control Docking, controls can be docked on any side of a form, providing greater flexibility in layout.

Figure 2. In-place Menu Editor

Existing ActiveX® controls can be leveraged and run on any form as well, preserving investments in existing technologies.

New controls-including Link Label, Tray Icon, and Print Preview-provide additional common functionality for developers. Link Label provides HTML-like linking to a specified URL. Text displayed using this control will appear underlined and the cursor will change to a hand as the mouse moves over it, firing an actionable event when clicked. Tray Icon enables developers to create applications that run in the Windows tray similar to the Microsoft SQL Server™ Service Manager. Windows Forms offers a printing framework that makes printing simple, including a Print Preview window with the Print Preview control.

Developers can build applications that support the broadest audience of users with Windows Forms. Windows Forms controls implement Microsoft Active Accessibility® programming interfaces, making it straightforward to build applications that support accessibility aids such as screen readers.