Basic form with VB.net!

Ever wanted to get started programming VB? Ever wondered what VB was?
Here is the guide for you!​

First off, get yourself a copy of the free visual basic program, VB express!
Visual Basic 2010 Express | Microsoft Visual Studio
Its a free program and is all you need to start programming. It should suffice for all your projects.

What is VB.NET? VB.NEt, A.K.A Visual Basic .NET is an object-oriented computer programming language that can be viewed as an evolution of the classic Visual Basic (VB), which is implemented on the .NET Framework.



Follow the instructions on the website and once your finished downloading it, open your program.

Your start page should look like this:



Lets start with the basics of this program and how it works.

On your front page, click new project.



Upon clicking the new project, select windows form application as your choice.
Name it anything you want, but it should be along the lines of My project.



Now, after creating your own project, you'll notice a couple of things on your screen. First is, on your left, you should see something called a toolbox.



This is where most of your tools will be added to the design stage of making your project or programme.
Most of the tools' functions are self-explanatory, so I won't get to far into that.
If you hover over the tools in the toolbox, a dialog box will show up and tell you their general function anyways.

In the middle of your screen, you should notice a blank square, which says Form on it.
The form is basically a blank template for you to edit, its technically a program already.

Try debugging, or running or project by pressing F5 to debug the form. See what happens.
Press F5 and your form should pop up.

This is one of the most important functions of VB.

You may ask, why are there 2 boxes?
Well, Visual Basic has two distinct environments, a Design environment and a Debug environment. Design Time is where you get to edit the form, add some pizazz. Debug is where you can test your program and see how well it performs. Or sometimes doesn't perform lol.

These 2 steps are key to visual basic programming. Designing and debugging. Remember that.

To further your knowledge in this language, lets try making a simple program.

Find the textbox tool in the toolbar. Click on it and add it to your blank form.

It should look like this now.



Do not mind the text in the textbox. That can be easily modified by going to the properties box in your right-hand corner.


Now create 2 more textboxes. They should line up with the first one and be parallel.

Check if yours is like mine.



Now add 3 labels, side-by-side to your textboxes.

If you did it correctly, it should look like this.



Debug it again by pressing F5. You might notice it's starting to bear some resemblance to an actual form you'd see on the internetzzz.

Stop debugging it now.

The next step of making this forms requires understanding of a properties.
Locate the properties box in your right-hand corner.

Change the text to "My form" or something along the lines of that.



Now change the label's properties.
You can use anything for this, this is what I chose.



Now debug it again by pressing F5.



There you go!
A fully functional form, in program mode, ready to use.

This guide was just meant to introduce VB, not anything above that level, you can add different colors to your form by editing the properties, but today I'm just showing you how to make a fully functional form.

Did this guide help you? Did you find troubles with it? Anything I can help with? PM me to get it resolved.​