Datasheet

The remainder of the IDE is the actual working space in which you’ll design your forms and write your
code. The top of the space contains a row of tabs describing the different files that are currently open.
Figure 1-12 shows how this area appears after creating the sample project. Form1 is being displayed in
Design view, and there is an additional tab for the Start page that is shown when you first start Visual
Studio 2005.
The first button on the right-hand side of the tab row (the downward-pointing triangle beside the X in
Figure 1-12) provides an alternative method for accessing the various files that are currently open by dis-
playing them in a drop-down list. This is particularly useful when you have a large number of files active
and you don’t want to navigate through the tab list. The other button closes the currently active file.
As soon as you make a change to a form, file, or class, the tab will be updated with an asterisk (*) after
the text to indicate that there are unsaved changes to that particular component. This unsaved marker is
also visible in the drop-down list described previously.
The rest of the working space contains the active file. In the case of Figure 1-12, this is the basic form
design. Most of this book deals with using this area to maximize your productivity when creating appli-
cations, but for a few quick references, see Chapter 6 for basic form design, Chapter 14 for editing class
diagrams, and Part V for code-related techniques.
Figure 1-12
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