How to Use the Toolbox in MS Visual Studio 2005

Learn how to use the Toolbox in MS Visual Studio 2005.

Another important component of Visual Studio 2005 is the Toolbox. Let us go ahead and take a look at that. You have several ways of accessing the Toolbox. One way is to click on the Tab next to the server explorer. Another way is to go ahead and select it from the view menu at the top of your screen. Or here is a tip, you can use Ctrl Alt X to popup the Toolbox if you do not already see it visible. Depending on what type of project you are working with, the Toolbox will contain different components. In this case, I am working with the windows form. So now, I see components that work directly with the windows form. So if I go ahead and expand all windows forms, I can see the variety of different controls that I can drag on to my windows form. If I would like too, I can drag a button, I can go ahead and drag a data going to view. As you can see, the Toolbox works in conjunction with the design surface to allow you to build applications rapidly. Through other features of the Toolbox, you can also customize the Toolbox. Let us go ahead and collapse this and scroll down to the bottom. If I want to, I can add my own Tab. Right click here and select add Tab. I will go ahead and add an Asli Tab. Here, I can go ahead and add different elements that I want to work with. Go ahead and right click on this area and select choose items. This pops up a dialog where I can select items from my Toolbox. I can see .net framework components. If I want to, I can go ahead and organize them by name space. I can scroll down and let us see if I see one I want to add such as the user control. I can go ahead and select that. I can also select COM components that I have on my system. If I have a Com component that I wish to work with, I can go ahead and add that to my Toolbox as well. I can also work with tasks for sequel servers which are listed under my maintenance tasks. I will go ahead and click Okay to add that .net component to my Toolbox. Now, I have a user control component that I can drag on to my form. Here is a tip for you. There is a southern use feature of the Toolbox that allows you to work directly with code. Let us go ahead and try this out. Go to your form and select the code. What I can do with my Toolbox that can select elements of code that I use quite often -- this become this chunk of code is relevant for me and I can go and drag this right under my Toolbox. As you can see, it is available for me to drag back on to my design surface. This undocumented feature is really useful when I want to reuse code elements. Later on, if I am building a separate code element, what I can do is go ahead and drag this item right back under my code editor. I am going to go ahead and delete this for now. As you have learned, the Toolbox allows you to greatly improve your productivity, not only with your controls but also with your code. In this lesson, you now know the different architectural choices you have with working with Visual Studio 2005. You also have a basic understanding of working with the IDE and you also learn a lot of tips and tricks along the way. So now, I am going to go ahead and close Visual Studio.