Lesson 1: Introduction to VB2019

1.1 Introduction

After downloading and installing VS 2019, you are now ready to launch Visual Studio 2019 and start programming in Visual Basic 2019.

1.2 Visual Studio 2019 Start Page

The VS2019 start page is quite different from VS 2017. When you first launch  Visual Studio 2019, the following start Page appears, as shown in Figure 1.1. You can quickly launch recently open recently opened projects, clone from GitHub, open a project or solution, open a local folder or create a new project.

Let's select Create a new project option and launch the Create a new project page, as shown in Figure 1.2. We select the Visual Basic language

In the Create new project page, we select Windows Forms App(.Net Framework)template as we want to develop a Windows desktop project, as shown in Figure 1.3

Upon clicking the selected project template, the project configuration page appears, as shown in Figure 1.4. You can configure your project by typing the project name and select a few other options.

1.3 Visual Basic 2019 IDE

Upon clicking the Create button the  Visual Basic 2019 IDE, as shown in Figure 1.6. You can see that the name of the project you entered earlier appears on the top right corner of the IDE.

VB2019 IDE comprises a few windows, the Form window, the Solution Explorer window and the Properties window. It also consists of a toolbox which contains many useful controls that allow a programmer to develop his or her Visual Basic 2019 program. The toolbox can be hidden or dragged to the bottom or side of the window.

Now, we shall proceed to show you how to create your first program in Visual Basic 2019. First, change the text of the form to My First vb2019 Program in the properties window, it will appear as the title of the program. Next, insert a button and change its text to Display Hidden Message. The design interface is shown in Figure 1.6

Click on the Display Hidden Message button to bring up the code window and enter the following statement between Private Sub and End Sub procedure, as shown in Figure 1.7

When you run this program and click on the Display Hidden Message button, you should get the following popup message box.

The function MsgBox is a built-in function of Visual Basic 2019 and it will display the text enclosed within the brackets. Now you have created your first program in Visual Basic 2019, we shall learn more Visual Basic 2019 programming techniques in coming lessons.