By Faiza Ajaz
Working in Visual Studio.Net IDE might seem a bit tough for novices, who have just started programming, and are encountering such an awesome collection of tools and facilities. It seems too much to handle at first, the screen loaded and sometimes overloaded with all sorts of docking or pinned windows. But when we get to know what all these windows are for, and when and why they should be used, programming with them becomes fun and learning. So while there are windows like Solution Explorer, Class View and Server Explorer to name a few, the focus of this article is the Property Window. You'll get to know what we do with it and what it can do for us. We'll have screen shots to make things more illustrative.
Property Window loads with the start of VS.NET IDE. If you have just started using the IDE, and have not yet played with the placement of windows yourself, you should find it at bottom right of your screen as shown below.
In case of not finding the window there doesn't mean that Microsoft forgot to add the Property Window to your IDE. You can always get it by clicking a property window button which is on top right of your IDE. This is one of the ways you can bring the Property Window to front. This button should look like this.
Now that you have property window in front of you, let's discuss what's in it and why it is used.
We use Property Window to change or view the properties of objects that we are working on at the time we are designing them. Suppose you are designing a Window Form which has, say, a text box and a label. You can have the size, layout, caption, font and other such properties of the form, textbox, and label through Property Window, without having to go through a hell of a lot of trouble writing complex codes to achieve this task. This is where programmers who come from C or C++, and don't know VB feel the real ease it brings to them.
Different options and properties displayed in this window depend on the kind of object you are working on. You may find different buttons when working on different types of objects, so the change should be obvious to you.
Right now, if you haven't opened any project, your Property Window should look like the one we have shown in the beginning. It consists of:
Here, currently selected objects are listed. These objects have to be in your current editor or designer. If you select more than one object, you'll be able to see the properties that are common to all of them.
It lists all the properties of the selected object, by category. It gives a tree view, where you have (+) and (-) to the left of the category name, and you can expand or collapse the category that you think you don't need.
Arranges all properties of the object or even selected alphabetically.
It displays Property Pages, which are a subset or a superset of the properties in the Property Window. You'll see it disables here.
Shows type of property and a brief description of the property.
Apart from these, there are other functionalities which are specific to the type of object.
It displays the events for an object. This Properties window toolbar control is only available when a form or control designer is active.
It lists all virtual functions for the selected class and allows you to add or delete overriding functions.
It lists all Windows messages and allows you to add or delete specified handler functions for the messages provided for the selected class.
This is all I have to say about the Property Window in Visual Studio.Net IDE. Though a few of these buttons might not be so clear to you, but this should give you an idea about what it does for us, and how can we utilize it.
