Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! (21 page)

2 either go to the Project menu and select
Add

Windows Form . . .
or go to the Solution Explorer,

right-click the project name (in this case, MyOwnBrowser)

select
Add
, and then select
Windows Form
. The Add

New Item dialog box will appear and ask which type of

form you want to add.

Select Windows Form and name the file Splash.cs.

3 Look at Figure 6-1 for the Add New Item dialog

to see what it should look like.

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A splash screen has particular properties since you’re not suppose to interact with it, it is purely infor4 mational and should not appear in the task bar, should not be resizable and more. Now make sure you select your new form in the

Properties window and set those par
Control Name

Control Type

Property

Value

ticular form properties using the

table to the right.

Splash Form

FormBorderStyle

None

The image for the background is

Splash Form

ShownInTaskbar

False

located in the Images folder under

Splash Form

StartPosition CenterScreen

Chapter 6 where you’ve installed your

companion content. (If you installed

Splash Form

Size:Width 450

the companion content at the default

Size:Height

375

location, then it should be at the following location on your hard drive: Splash Form

BackgroundImage

www.jpg

MyDocuments\Microsoft Press\VCS

2005 Express\)

Splash

Form

BackgroundImageLayout

Stretch

lblApplicationTitle Label

Text

Application

Title

Often, it’s difficult to select a par-

lblApplicationTitle Label

BackColor

Web:Transparent

ticular control. To see all controls

in the currently displayed form,

lblApplicationTitle Label

Font

Microsoft

Sans

Serif,

you can select the drop-down list

20pt

at the top of the Properties win-

dow. Figure 6-2 shows the drop-

down list for the Splash Screen

lblApplicationTitle Label

ForeColor

Web:White

form. To select any particular

control, highlight it on the list and

lblVersion Label Text

Version

it will be automatically selected on

the design surface.

lblVersion Label BackColor

Web:Transparent

lblVersion Label Font

Microsoft

Sans

Serif,

12pt

lblCopyright Label ForeColor

Web:White

lblCopyright Label Text

Copyright

Figure 6-2

Finding all the controls on a

lblCopyright Label BackColor

Web:Transparent

selected form

lblCopyright Label Font

Microsoft

Sans

Serif,

8.25pt

lblCopyright Label ForeColor

Web:White

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Add three label controls to the form and name them
lblApplicationTitle
,
lblVersion
, and 5

When a procedure directive tells

lblCopyright
. Use the Properties window to set the properties specified in the previous table.
you to add a control and then

name it XYZ, it means that you

need to add the control onto the

Look at Figure 6-3 to see where the three labels are located and place them there in the designer. The 6

design surface, then go to the

text in the image is for reference only; the application title, version, and copyright information are all
Properties window and change the

obtained dynamically. This means the form will get the values from a variable or a setting somewhere in your
(Name) property of the control

project. In fact, at run time those three pieces of information are obtained when the splash screen is loaded
to XYZ.

by looking up application settings stored in the Project Designer Application pane. Now you’ll have to hook up the splash screen to the application and to do this 7 you have to modify the browser form constructor. Open the code for the browser form (not the splash screen form) and modify the constructor so that it looks like the following:

public partial class Browser : Form

{

Splash splashScreen = new Splash();

public Browser()

{

InitializeComponent();

splashScreen.Show();

Application.DoEvents();

}

The previous step will display the splash screen but you need to close it and 8 make it disappear whenever the other form is ready to be displayed. The last

Figure 6-3

event before the form is displayed is the Activated event. So you need to select the Browser form in Design
Splash screen with the background

View and then go in the Properties window. Then click on the Events button (yellow lightning) at the top of
and the labels location

the Properties window and double-click the Activated event. The Browser_Activated event handler is displayed in Code View. Add the following code: private void Browser_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

Thread.Sleep(3000);

splashScreen.Close();

}

Place your cursor within the “Thread” text. You should see a familiar yellow and red smart tag. This 9 smart tag is there to let you know that the Thread class is in the System.Threading namespace and that you don’t have it in your using directives on top of the file. Move your mouse over the smart tag, click the down arrow and then select
using System.Threading;
to add it to your list of using directives.
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TO VIEW THE APPLICATION TITLE, VERSION, AND COPYRIGHT PR0PERTIES

1 Select
MyOwnBrowser
from the Solution Explorer, right-click, and choose
Properties
. The Project Designer page opens. The Project Designer has a series of information tabs (as shown in Figure 6-4). You’ll work mainly in the first tab for now, which is the Application pane. You'll configure several elements in this pane. All the elements you'll modify will affect how the application looks.

Figure 6-4

Project Designer page

To change the application icon, select the Icon option, and then click the Ellipsis button (...). Find the

2 Chapter 6 directory where you’ve installed the book’s sample files and look for the
globe.ico
file in
You’re not changing the icon of

the Images folder. (If you installed the companion content at the default location, then it should be at the
the main form when doing this

following location on your hard drive: My Documents\Microsoft Press\VCS 2005 Express\. )
application icon change. In order

to do this, you need to change the

form icon’s property by assigning

You’ve changed the icon of your application assembly or, in other words, you’ve changed the icon of the
a bitmap image. You’re going to

executable binary (.exe) file itself. If you build the application and look on your hard drive where the applica
change the main form icon in the
tion is compiled (as you learned in a previous chapter, all your projects are by default located at My
last section of this chapter.

Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\MyOwnBrowser\MyOwnBrowser\bin\Debug or \bin\release), you’ll find that your application, MyOwnBrowser.exe, has the globe icon that you’ve just selected instead of a default icon.

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Click the
Assembly Information. . .
button. You should see a dialog box that looks like 3 the one in Figure 6-5.

Change the Copyright information: replace the word
Microsoft
with your name and 4 keep the rest of the information as it is. (If it's not already filled with your information, change it to match your name or company info.)

Insert spaces between the words
MyOwnBrowser
in

5 the Title text box. (This string is used to display the

The assembly version informa-

tion that you see here is also what

application title on the splash screen.) Insert two spaces to

the application will display in the

get the following title:
My Own Browser
.

splash screen you’re creating.

You’ll see the source code that will

display the information on the

Click
OK
to close the Assembly Information dialog
splash screen later in the chapter.
6 box.

Figure 6-5

Now that you have all your assembly data entered in the Project Designer application pane you need to get
Assembly Information dialog box

it onto your splash screen form and in the correct labels. You need to do this in the splash screen constructor to obtain the information from where it was entered. The idea here is to make the splash screen generic enough that you could reuse it in another project. I’ve used the same methods that are found in the about box template as you’ll see in a minute. Open Splash.cs in Code View and modify the code so that it looks like the following. (If you don’t want to type all of this code, you can copy it from the completed application in the Chapter6 folder.)