C# GUI design always done by Visual Studios?

[DavidKroukamp]

Hi all,

I'm in my 2nd year of software development (doing C#) and having come from a Java background, and having programmed a few GUI's in C#/Visual Studio's; I was wondering...
Like in Java You can use an IDE to build a GUI, however you can also simply add Frames, textboxes and so on manually(no IDE just plain java programming). But this does not seem to be present in C#. I have looked around the net and all the had is this:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752299.aspx
So my question is why in that case can you not write a GUI manually like in Java, or is it simply because their/Microsofts' GUI creator is good enough?

Sorry if it's silly but i'm really stumped.

[Momerath]

You can create your GUI 'by hand' if you so desire. Open one of your GUI projects and take a look at the Form1.Designer.cs file (for example). That's the stuff you'll have to do to create a form and add controls to it. The Program.cs shows how you'd start up the form you've created.

It's just easier to do in the GUI than it is by hand.

[ddanbe]

Start a new windows forms app.
Open the Form.cs file and add the extra code after the //+++

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        //+++
        private System.Windows.Forms.Button MyBtn;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            //+++
            this.MyBtn = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
            this.MyBtn.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(100, 100);
            this.MyBtn.Name = "MyBtn";
            this.MyBtn.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(75, 23);
            this.MyBtn.TabIndex = 2;
            this.MyBtn.Text = "A button";
            this.MyBtn.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
            this.MyBtn.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.MyBtn_Click);
            this.Controls.Add(MyBtn);
        }

        //+++
        private void MyBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("My button clicked.");
        }
    }
}

Run and try it out, this is a Button created without using the VS Designer.
As Momerath I prefer the Designer, who does al that coding for me.
It is still important to know what is happening under the hood and if I have a situation where I want 100 buttons I still program this way, putting al this code in a loop to generate my 100 buttons. In such a situation it becomes harder to use the designer and coding is far better.
You can also use pure C# code with WPF, but I think few people do that.

[DavidKroukamp]

Hi all,

I'm in my 2nd year of software development (doing C#) and having come from a Java background, and having programmed a few GUI's in C#/Visual Studio's; I was wondering...
Like in Java You can use an IDE to build a GUI, however you can also simply add Frames, textboxes and so on manually(no IDE just plain java programming). But this does not seem to be present in C#. I have looked around the net and all the had is this:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752299.aspx
So my question is why in that case can you not write a GUI manually like in Java, or is it simply because their/Microsofts' GUI creator is good enough?

Sorry if it's silly but i'm really stumped.

OOooH now I get it! And that means my friends wrong :D.
thanks all