Elements of the Visual basic integrated development environment

Elements of an integrated development environment

Basic working environments often refer to the integrated development environment or the IDE because it integrates many different functions in a common environment, such as design, editing, compilation, and debugging. In most traditional development tools, each feature is run with a separate program and has its own interface.

In this section, the following topics are discussed:

1. Start (Visual Basic idevbconstartingvisualbasicide) Start and run.

2. The integrated development Environment Element (Vbconintegrateddevelopmentenvironmentelements) describes the different components of the IDE.

3. The Environment option (vbconenvironmentoptions) configures Visual Basic to meet individual needs.

Start the Visual Basic IDE

When you run Visual Basic setup, you allow a program item to be placed in a program group that already exists, or create a new program group and program item for Visual Basic in Windows. You are ready to start Visual Basic from Windows.

To start Visual Basic from Windows, follow these steps:

1. Click Start on the task bar.

2. Select Programs, and then select Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0. -or-click Start on the task bar. Select Programs. Use Windows Explorer to find the Visual Basic executable file.

3. Double-click the Visual Basic icon. You can also create a Visual Basic shortcut key, and double-click the shortcut key. When you first start Visual Basic, you can see the interface for the integrated development environment, as shown in Figure 2.1.

Elements of an integrated development environment

The Visual Basic integrated Development Environment (IDE) consists of the following elements:

Menu bar

Displays the Visual Basic commands that you are using. In addition to providing standard file, edit, view, window, and Help menus, you also provide programming-specific feature menus, such as "Engineering," "Formatting," or "debugging."

Context Menu

A shortcut key that includes frequently performed actions. Click the mouse portals on the object you want to use to open the context menu. The private shortcut list that is valid in the context menu depends on the environment in which the mouse button is clicked. For example, the context menu that appears when the right mouse button is clicked on the Toolbox allows you to choose to display the Parts dialog box, suppress the toolbox, dock or hang up the toolbox, or add a custom tab to the Toolbox.

Tool bar

Provides fast access to commonly used commands in a programming environment. Click the button on the toolbar to perform the action that the button represents. By default, the Standard toolbar is displayed after you start Visual Basic. Additional edit, form design, and debugging toolbars can be moved or moved out of the Toolbars command on the View menu.

The toolbar can be attached to the menu bar, or to the left border with a vertical strip. If you drag it off the menu, it can "hang" in the window.

Toolbox

Provides a set of tools for placing controls in a form at design time. In addition to the default toolbox layout, you can create a custom layout by selecting Add tab from the context menu and adding controls to the Results tab.

For more information about special controls, see chapter III "Forms, controls, and menus" and chapter seventh "using Visual Basic standard controls." For more information about how to add controls to the toolbox, see "Adding Controls in Engineering" in chapter four, "Management of projects."

Project Manager window

Lists the forms and modules in the current project. A project is a collection of files used to create an application.

For more information on engineering, please refer to Chapter Fourth "Management of Works".

Properties window

Lists the property setting values for the selected form and control. An attribute is a feature of an object, such as size, title, or color.

For more information about properties, see chapter III "Properties, methods, and Events Overview" in forms, controls, and menus