1. Chapter 4: Do-It-Yourself Designing (Designing Interfaces)

2. Chapter Objectives After studying Chapter 4, you should be able to:
Use a text box to get user input
Perform an action with a button control
Code a control’s Click event procedure
Stop an application using the Me.Close() instruction
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

3. Delegating the Work When designing an interface
Examine each step in the problem’s algorithm, along with its output and input items
Assign meaningful names to each of the controls
Beware of Hungarian notation and use camel case
Make sure that each control has a purpose
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

4. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Figure 4-1 Problem specification, output, input, and algorithm for the Edwards and Son problem
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

5. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Figure 4-2 List of controls
Figure 4-3 Name and purpose of each control
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

6. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Figure 4-4 Controls added to the form
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

7. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Sentence capitalization
Capitalize only first letter in each word and in any words that are customarily capitalized
Used in identifying labels
Book title capitalization
Capitalize first letter in each word, except for articles, conjunctions, and prepositions
Used in button captions
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

8. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Making the Interface More User-Friendly
Use an access key
Users can use the keyboard Alt button
The ampersand (&) key sets the letter after the to be the access key
Alt key
If you do not see the access keys press the alt key
Figure 4-8 Access keys shown in the interface
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

9. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
Access key
Allows user to select a menu using the alt key in combination with a letter or number
Not case sensitive
Should be assigned to each control (in the interface) that can accept user input
Allows user to work with interface even when mouse becomes inoperative
Also useful for people with disabilities that prevent them from using a mouse
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

10. Delegating the Work (Cont.)
TabIndex property
Sets the tab order allowing the user to use the keyboard’s tab key
Figure 4-9 TabIndex values for the Label1 and txtRevenue control
Figure 4-10 Correct TabIndex values for the interface
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

11. Do What I Tell You to Do Tab order When interface is first created
Determined by number stored in each control’s TabIndex property
When interface is first created
TabIndex values reflect the order in which each control was added to the form
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

12. Summary Creating the user interface
Fourth step in the problem-solving process
Windows applications in Visual Basic
Composed of solutions, projects, and files
Label controls
Display text that user is not allowed to edit while an application is running
Picture boxes
Used to display images on a form
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012

13. Summary (Cont.) Good practice to save solution every 10-15 minutes
Form’s StartPosition property
Specifies the position of the form when it first appears on the screen
Font property
Determines the type, style, and size of font used to display text on the form
Picture box control’s Image property
Specifies name of file containing the image to display
Good practice to lock the controls in place on form
Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2012