The Visual Basic Development Environment

Overview Of The Integrated Development Environment
The Visual Basic IDE has three distinct states: Design, Run, and Debug. The current state appears in Visual Basic’s title bar.
The IDE is composed of these parts:
Ø The menu bar
Ø The toolbar
Ø The Project Explorer
Ø The Properties window
Ø The Form Layout window
Ø The toolbox
Ø Form designers
Ø Code windows

The Menu Bar
The menu bar presents the Visual Basic menus. Here_s a list of those menus and what they do:
Ø File_File handling and printing; also used to make EXE files
Ø Edit_Standard editing functions, undo, searches
Ø View_Displays or hides windows and toolbars
Ø Project_Sets project properties, adds/removes forms and modules, and adds/removes references and components
Ø Format_Aligns or sizes controls
Ø Debug_Starts/stops debugging and stepping through programs
Ø Run_Starts a program, or compiles and starts it
Ø Tools_Adds procedures, starts the Menu Editor, sets IDE options
Ø Add-Ins_Add-in manager, lists add-ins like Application Wizard and API Viewer
Ø Window_Arranges or selects open windows
Ø Help_Handles Help and the About box

The Toolbar
The toolbar contains buttons matching popular menu items, clicking the button is the same as selecting a menu item and can save you some time. Besides the main toolbar, you can also display other dockable toolbars in Visual Basic: the Debug, Edit, and Form Editor toolbars. To display one of these toolbars, just select it using the Toolbars item in the View menu; the toolbar appears free-floating at first, but you can dock it as you like in the IDE.

Form Designers And Code Windows
Form designers are really just windows in which a particular form appears. You can place controls into a form simply by drawing them after clicking the corresponding control’s tool in the toolbox.
Code windows are similarly easy to understand: you just place the code you want to attach to an object in the code window (to open an object’s code in the code window, just double-click that object). There are two drop-down list boxes at the top of the code window: the left list lets you select the object to add code to, and the right list lets you select the procedure to add (all the methods the object supports appear in this list). That completes our overview of the IDE.