Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! (8 page)

Windows XP SP2 comes with

a graphical interface for a Windows application. For example, a Windows service is an appli
roughly four dozen Windows
cation that runs on Windows in the background—it doesn’t have a user interface, doesn’t
services. For example, a Windows

service validates your user name

produce any visual output, starts when Windows starts, and doesn’t even require
and password at start up.

a user to be logged in to start executing.

In some other cases, you don’t want users to interact with a graphical interface you’ve created. For instance, you could write an application that monitors the available physical memory on a computer then displays that information once it reaches a certain level. The information is displayed in a user interface but does not require any input from the user. Figure 3-1 shows the result of the famous Hello World! application as a console application.

Figure 3-1

Console application

This type of application is called a console application because everything is displayed in a system console window. You may have heard these types of windows referred to by many different names: a DOS window, a command prompt window, or simply the command window. The most common output in a console application is simple text.
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Console applications can be as feature rich and as complex as Windows applications. The only difference is that they don’t have a graphical interface. Let’s look at one possible use for console applications.

In corporate data centers, many applications execute all day and night, producing a large amount of data. It would be time-consuming and problematic to rely on people to

Simple Text and

verify the data. So data centers are usually highly automated to facilitate this job. Console

ASCII Characters

applications produce, manipulate, and verify the data in scripts or batch files. Console
Simple text (also called

applications can be written in many different programming languages (C, C++, C#, Visual
ASCII characters) is the usual

Basic, and so on) and scripting languages (Perl, Python, or JScript®).
output of a console application,

In contrast to a console application, a Windows

but some console applications

use ASCII graphic characters.

application has a graphical interface, as shown in

(ASCII stands for American

Figure 3-2. (It is also called a Windows Forms

Standard Code for Information

application in .NET).

Interchange.) An ASCII code is

These applications are usually installed and accessi
the numerical representation
ble in the Windows Start menu, and by default they

of a character (such as “0”or

share some common characteristics, such as a Close

“#”) or an action of some sort.

(Pressing Enter in a word pro-

button, a Maximize button, and a Minimize button.

cessor to move a line of text is

an action represented by an

ASCII character, for instance.)

Close Button

Maximize Button

Minimize Button

The ASCII graphic character set,

Figure 3-2

also called extended ASCII char-

Windows application

acters, includes vertical lines,

vertical double lines, corners,

and much more. ASCII charac-

ters are sometimes used to cre-

Getting Started

ate boxes around text in console

applications.

To get started writing the code for the first version of the application, you’ll need to start Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. To do this follow these three easy steps: click Start, choose All Programs, then select Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.

Please note that console appli-

cations are still executed in

Windows, but in a console context.

Chapter 3: Creating Your First Application

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The first time you start Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, it will take some time to load since the IDE is being configured. You should see a screen similar to Figure 3-3. Before we go futher, let’s pause and

admire the IDE in all its glory. With this version of Visual C#, the IDE got a nice new

Figure 3-3

Environment configuration for first

makeover. Look at Figure 3-4 and feel the

time use of Microsoft Visual C# 2005

excitement.

Express Edition

If you’re not feeling the excitement yet,

you soon will. The development environment has been designed to make a lot more information available up front and to get you more productive faster. From this screen, everything you need to build an application is available in a couple of clicks. From the IDE you Menu Bar

Main Toolbar

Toolbox

Solution Explorer

Recent Projects

MSDN Visual C# RSS

Feed

Getting Started

Visual C#

Express Headlines

Status Bar

Figure 3-4

The IDE in all its glory

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type in your code, compile your code, launch the application, find your mistakes and fix them, get help on the syntax, and many other things. Furthermore, the Visual C# 2005 IDE is designed to help you by generating a lot of code for you so that you have less to type in. If you didn’t have the IDE and you wanted to write a Windows Forms application, you would

normally have to write a lot more code and it would be more prone to errors. With the new
I will show you how and where

IDE, most of the actions you’ll perform will automatically generate a lot of code behind the
to look for this generated code in

Chapter 5.

scenes.

As you spend more time with the program, you’ll find that there are many different ways to perform the same actions. For instance, to complete a specific action you can use a series of menu choices, or use a keystroke shortcut, or click an
icon
on a
toolbar
, click on a
hyperlink
in a page, or you can right-click and choose an option from a
context-sensitive
menu
. Before diving into our first application and before you write some code, we’ll go

through each big component of the IDE.

Even when the Start Page disap-

The first page you see is a really useful one: the Start Page. Let’s get into what
pears, you can always get it back

information you see on that page.

by going to the View menu and

selecting Start Page.

■
Recent Projects
Here you’ll get the list of projects or solutions that were recently
The first and only rule of this book

is to not be afraid to experiment.

opened. You can also create a new project or open an existing project that is not in
Click, look, read, and try when-

the list.

ever possible. This is really the

best way to learn. I’ll show you

■
Getting Started
I call this useful section Help Central because if you need quick help,
some important material, tips, and

tricks throughout this book, but