Chapter 9: Windows Forms: Menus, Built-in Dialog Boxes, and Printing

Main Page

    Menus
    Menu Items
    Context Menus
    The Built-in Dialog Boxes
    Open File Dialogs
    Save File Dialogs
    Font Dialogs
    Color Dialogs
    Printing Documents
    Print Dialogs
    Print Preview Dialogs
    Custom Print Previews
    Page Setup Dialogs
    Immediate Solutions: Using the MainMenu Class
    Using the MenuItem Class
    Creating Menus
    Creating Submenus
    Adding Checkmarks to Menu Items
    Creating Menu Access Keys
    Creating Menu Shortcuts
    Changing a Menu Item's Caption at Run Time
    Creating Menu Separators
    Using the Popup Event
    Showing and Hiding Menu Items
    Disabling Menu Items
    Drawing Menu Items Yourself
    Creating Menus in Code
    Merging MDI Menus
    Creating MDI Window Menus
    Using the ContextMenu Class
    Creating Context Menus
    Using the OpenFileDialog Class
    Creating Open File Dialogs
    Using the SaveFileDialog Class
    Creating Save File Dialogs
    Using the FontDialog Class
    Creating Font Dialogs
    Using the ColorDialog Class
    Creating Color Dialogs
    Printing with the Printing Example
    Using the PrintDocument and PrintSetting Classes
    Using the PrintDialog Class
    Printing
    Using the PrintPreviewDialog Class
    Creating Print Preview Dialogs
    Using the PrintPreviewControl Class
    Creating Custom Print Previews
    Using the PageSetupDialog Class
    Creating Page Setup Dialogs

In Depth

In this chapter, I'm going to take a look at some very popular topics—menus, Visual Basic's built-in dialog boxes, and printing. If you're familiar with Visual Basic 6.0, you'll find many differences here. Menus have their own control now, instead of a separate menu editor (giving menus their own control is actually more in line with the Visual Basic philosophy, so that's an improvement). Each of the built-in dialog boxes—file open, file save, and so on—now have their own separate controls as well, so instead of using a single CommonDialog control, there are a number of new built-in dialog boxes, such as print preview and page setup. And printing has changed also, as we'll see.