Link Labels

Link labels are new in VB .NET. They're based on the Label class, but also let you support Web-style hyperlinks to the Internet and other Windows forms. In other words, you can use a link label control for everything that you can use a label control for, and you can also make part of the text in this control a link to a Visual Basic object or Web page. Here's the class inheritance hierarchy of this control:

Object
   MarshalByRefObject
      Component
         Control
            Label
               LinkLabel

Besides functioning as a full label control, you can display multiple hyperlinks in a single link label control, and use the LinkColor, VisitedLinkColor, and ActiveLinkColor properties to set the colors of the link, as you would in a Web page in a browser. The LinkArea property sets the area of the text that activates a link, and the LinkClicked event determines what happens when the link is clicked, as we'll see.

Each hyperlink is an object of the LinkLabel.Link class and is stored in a collection called Links. You can use the Add method of the Links collection to specify the hyperlinks in a link label and use a LinkClicked event handler to handle the link when it is clicked. We'll see how this works in detail later in this chapter.

And that's enough overview—it's time to start creating these controls, text boxes, rich text boxes, labels, and link labels in our Windows applications.