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Using Visual Inheritance between Forms

As you know, inheritance allows you to derive one class from another. Visual Basic even provides a visual way of deriving one form from another. To see how this works, create a new Windows application and add a button to Form1. Then select the Build|Build menu item to build the project; this makes Form1 available for inheritance.

To derive a form from Form1—which will inherit all aspects of Form1, including the button—select the Project|Add Inherited Form menu item, then double-click the Inherited Form icon in the Templates box to open the Inheritance Picker, as you see in Figure 4.23.

Select Form1 in the Inheritance Picker, and click OK, adding a new form, Form2, derived from Form1, as you see in Figure 4.24. Note that even the title text, "Form1", was copied from Form1, and that there's a special icon at upper left in the button in this new form to indicate that this button is locked—because it's been inherited from Form1, it cannot be removed.