See Also Properties Events Methods
Description
A form is a window or dialog box that makes up part of an application's interface.
Remarks
Forms have properties that determine aspects of their appearance, such as position, size, and color, and aspects of their behavior, such as whether they are resizable.
Forms can also respond to events initiated by the user or triggered by the system. For example, you could write code in a form's Click event procedure that would allow the user to change the color of a form by clicking it.
In addition to properties and events, you can use methods to manipulate forms from code. For example, you can use the Move method to change a form's location and size.
A special kind of form, the MDI form, can contain other forms called MDI child forms. An MDI form is created with the New MDI Form command on the File menu; an MDI child form is created by choosing New Form from the File menu and then setting the MDIChild property to True.
You can create multiple instances of forms in code by using the New reserved word in Dim, Global, Set, and Static statements.
When designing forms, set the BorderStyle property to define a form's border and set the Caption property to put text in the title bar. In code, you can use the Hide and Show methods to make forms invisible or visible at run time.
Note You cannot use Hide on an MDI child form.
Setting BorderStyle to 0 removes the border. If you want your form to have a border without the title bar, Control-box menu, Maximize button, and Minimize button, you can do so by deleting any text from the form's Caption property and setting the form's ControlBox, MaxButton, and MinButton properties to False.
Form is an object type. You can declare variables as type Form before setting them to an instance of a type of form that was declared at design time. Similarly, you can declare a parameter to a procedure as type Form.
Forms also can be server links in a DDE conversation, with a label, picture box, or text box control furnishing the data.
| ActiveControl FontBold LinkTopic ActiveFormGCUI9X FontItalic MaxButton AutoRedraw1UY7ZM3 FontName MDIChild BackColor1W9T6JQ FontSize MinButton BorderStyle FontStrikethru MousePointer Caption FontTransparent Name ClipControls FontUnderline Picture ControlBox35ZQLA ForeColor ScaleHeight Count hDC ScaleLeft CurrentX Height ScaleMode CurrentY HelpContextID ScaleTop DrawMode hWnd ScaleWidth DrawStyle4PNS0NQ Icon Tag DrawWidthMEUSKJ Image Top Enabled KeyPreview Visible FillColorL2TW7M Left Width FillStyle2N3S7OE LinkMode WindowState |
| Activate KeyPress MouseDown Click KeyUp MouseMove DblClick LinkClose MouseUp Deactivate2E06TW LinkError Paint DragDrop LinkExecute QueryUnload DragOver LinkOpen Resize GotFocus Load Unload KeyDown LostFocus |
| Circle PrintForm Show ClsLANCLS Print TextHeight4OFKMKO Hide PSet TextWidth Line Refresh ZOrder Move SetFocus Point Scale |
Help:
Controls
Forms Collection
MDIForm
Using DDE
Programmer's Guide:
Chapter 2, "Your First Visual Basic Application"
Chapter 5 , "Managing Projects"
Chapter 14, "Multiple-Document Interface (MDI) Applications"