Using Visual Studio

Using Visual Studio Community

Visual Studio program is a very powerful software that allows us to develop applications that can work in many environments such as desktop, web, smart phones. Also, it is quite expensive software.

However, Microsoft publishes Express versions of these programs for free. We can use VS Express For Desktop to develop desktop applications and VS Express For Web to develop web applications.

As of Visual Studio 2015 version, Microsoft started to use the name Community instead of Express and stopped publishing separate programs for Desktop and Web projects. With Community 2015 and 2017 versions, we can create many different types of projects, both web and desktop-based.

The Express and Community editions are very powerful editors, even though they are simplified to the full versions of Visual Studio.

Create New Web Site

When we give the New Web Site command from the File menu, we can create a website of the type we want by using the window that appears.

In this window, we can create an empty website with the "Asp.Net Empty Website" option. In this case, no files will be created automatically except the configuration file (web.config).

With the "Asp.Net Web Form Site" option, you can create a ready-made website and organize it the way you want. In this ready-made site, many things such as membership transactions, security settings and the necessary database connections are made automatically, and we can develop the site by adapting all the pages and controls ourselves.

In addition, at the bottom of the window, where the main folder of the site is should be selected. All files and pages that will be created in the future will be created in this folder by the program.

The .Net Framework version must be selected correctly from the top of the window.

On the left, we must select the programming language we will use on our site. Many options are available in Community versions like Visual Basic, Visual C#, Python..

After specifying all our preferences correctly, click OK and the project is created and we can start working.

Opening a Web Site

When we open the program, we see the Start Page. Recently used websites are listed here, and if desired, these websites can be opened by clicking.

To open a website that is not in the recent list, it is sufficient to click the Open Web Site command and select the main folder of the site to open.

Solution Explorer Panel

All files and folders belonging to the project or website we are working on are displayed in the Solution Explorer panel. From here, we can easily access the file we want and perform operations such as opening, deleting, naming, etc.

This panel is located on the right of the screen and can be moved to another side if desired.

Panels can also be used by grouping.

We can reopen closed panels by clicking on the View menu.

Properties Panel

All properties of the selected object in the workspace are displayed in this panel and can be changed from here. These features can also be changed by code during the program's running.

ToolBox

It is the panel on the left side of the window where the Asp.Net controls are categorized.

From here, we can place the object we want on our page with the drag and drop method.

The pin icon in the upper right corner of the panels allows them to auto-hide or stay fixed.

EXERCISES