Hello fellow C# programmers! When I first started the idea of building a desktop application seemed intimidating. I’m going to show you that it isn’t that hard. Today, we’ll be working through a simple yet educational project – creating a basic desktop application using C# and Windows Forms. By the end of this guide, you will have developed a ‘counter’ application that increments a count each time a button is clicked. After we get the counter button set up I’ll show you how to do create a reset button to bring the count back to zero. I’m assuming you already have Visual Studio installed. If you don’t have it installed, check out my previous post here. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Create a new Windows Forms Application
1. Click on “Create a new project” button.
2. In the new window, select “Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)” from the project template list. If you don’t see it, use the search box to find it.
3. Click on the “Next” button.
4. Name your project and select a location to save it, then click on the “Create” button.
Step 2: Designing the User Interface
1. You should now see a blank form titled “Form1” in the Design view.
2. Open the Toolbox panel (View -> Toolbox), expand the “Common Controls” section, find the “Button” control, and drag it to your form.
3. Below the button, drag and drop a “Label” control from the Toolbox to your form. This will be used to display the count.
4. Click on the button, go to the Properties window, and change the button’s Text property to something meaningful, such as “Click me”.
5. Click on the label, go to the Properties window, and clear the Text property (it should be blank to start with).
Step 3: Write the Button Click Event Code
1. Double click on the button to generate a click event handler.
2. You should now be in the code view, inside a method called something like button1_Click. This method will be executed whenever the button is clicked.
3. Declare a private field at the class level to hold the count.
4. Inside the button1_Click method, increment the count and display it in the label. The code should look something like this:
Step 4: Add in a Reset Button
1. Go back to “Form1” in the Design view.
2. In the Toolbox panel drag another “Button” onto the form.
3. Click on the button, go to the Properties window, and change the button’s Text property to “Reset”.
4. Double click on the “Reset” button to generate a click event handler.
5. Inside the button2_Click method, increment the count and display it in the label. The code should look something like this:
Step 5: Build and Run the Project
1. Save your project by clicking on File -> Save All.
2. Build your project by clicking on Build -> Build Solution.
3. Run your project by clicking on Debug -> Start Debugging or simply press F5.
4. You should now see your application in a new window. Try clicking the button and the count should increment and be displayed in the label.
Conclusion
Congratulations you just made a simple desktop application using C# and Windows Forms which increments and displays a count each time a button is clicked and includes a reset button. This is a very basic application, but it provides a good starting point for learning more about C# and Windows Forms applications. Thank you for joining me here and coding along with me.
To see the code you can get it here.