CHAPTER 19 BUILDING (Web site design and hosting) A BETTER WINDOW WITH
CHAPTER 19 BUILDING A BETTER WINDOW WITH SYSTEM.612 STEM.WINDOWS.FORMS Although the complete derivation of a Form type involves numerous base classes and interfaces, do understand that you are not required to learn the role of each and every member from each and every parent class or implemented interface to be a proficient Windows Forms developer. In fact, the majority of the members (properties and events in particular) you will use on a daily basis are easily set using the Visual Studio 2005 IDE Properties window. Before we move on to examine some specific members inherited from these parent classes, Table 19-3 outlines the basic role of each base class. Table 19-3. Base Classes in the Form Inheritance Chain Parent Class Meaning in Life System.Object Like any class in .NET, a Form is-a object. System.MarshalByRefObject Recall during our examination of .NET remoting (see Chapter 18) that types deriving from this class are accessed remotely via a reference (not a copy) of the remote type. System.ComponentModel.Component This class provides a default implementation of the IComponent interface. In the .NET universe, a component is a type that supports design-time editing, but is not necessarily visible at runtime. System.Windows.Forms.Control This class defines common UI members for all Windows Forms UI controls, including the Form type itself. System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl This class defines support for auto-scrolling behaviors. System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl This class provides focus-management functionality for controls that can function as a container for other controls. System.Windows.Forms.Form This class represents any custom Form, MDI child, or dialog box. As you might guess, detailing each and every member of each class in the Form s inheritance chain would require a large book in itself. However, it is important to understand the behavior supplied by the Control and Form types. I ll assume that you will spend time examining the full details behind each class at your leisure using the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK documentation. The Functionality of the Control Class The System.Windows.Forms.Control class establishes the common behaviors required by any GUI type. The core members of Control allow you to configure the size and position of a control, capture keyboard and mouse input, get or set the focus/visibility of a member, and so forth. Table 19-4 defines some (but not all) properties of interest, grouped by related functionality.
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