Learning VB.NEt

[Pis7ftw]

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to the programming scene. Did a little in high school and nothing spectacular (HTML). I'm self-learning VB and using Visual Studio Express and I'm looking for a better explanation of a Dialog than my book is giving me in regards to VB. Things like dialog box functions in particular.

Any help?

[.paul.]

here's some examples:

http://www.scproject.biz/Using%20Dialogs.htm

[Pis7ftw]

Thanks! Very helpful!

[Pis7ftw]

Thanks! Very helpful!

[jmcilhinney]

In implementation, a dialogue is just a form like any other. In concept, a dialogue is a form that is displayed for a short period of time and either it tells you something, i.e. it displays some data/information, or you tell it something, i.e. you enter or select some data in some control(s), or both. That's where the term "dialogue" comes from: the conversation between the user and the form.

Dialogues can be modal or modeless. A modal dialogue is one that prevents the user accessing the calling form until the dialogue is dismissed. In .NET you can display a form by calling its Show or ShowDialog method, with ShowDialog providing modal behaviour. ShowDialog will return a DialogResult value that is generally used to determine which Button the user clicked to dismiss it. You control that by setting the DialogResult property of the form to dismiss it or the DialogResult properties of the Buttons in the designer.

To create a true modeless dialogue, you must specify an owner when displaying a form. If you just call Show then the form will be displayed and that's it. If you call Show and pass another form as an argument (usually Me to indicate that the current form is the owner) then the dialogue will always remain in front of the owner without preventing access to it. It will also be minimised, restored and closed when its own is. An example of a modeless dialogue is a Find & Replace window in VB Express and many other applications.