Visual J# Express Development Environment

The Microsoft Visual J# Express Edition integrated development environment (IDE) is where you build, test, and debug your J# application. The Visual J# IDE provides a simplified user interface, including:

Code Editor

Where you enter your J# source code.
Windows Forms designer

For creating your application's window and controls.
Data explorer

For viewing information stored in databases.
Debugger

A powerful tool for stepping through your application to find errors.
Visual Class designer

For creating classes using a graphical user interface.

Thanks to the IDE, you don't need to type the names of the compiler, the appropriate switches, input source files, and output targets on the command line. Instead, you program by writing code, compiling it, running it, and debugging it inside the IDE. The IDE is task editor, compiler, and debugging environment all in one. The IDE also provides a jumping off point for organizing your sources files.

Most of the time you will alternate between the Windows Form designer, where you create the user interface for your program, and the Code Editor where you enter the J# source code that makes up the bulk of your application. The Windows Form designer allows you to drag controls such as buttons, menus, tab controls and more advanced controls such as Web browsers, calendars, and grid view controls. The designer will automatically generate the source code that creates these controls, and include the J# methods that your program will use to interact with them.

Features of the Visual J# Express Development Environment

The Visual J# IDE contains a number of windows, toolbars, and menus that you can configure to suit your own personal preferences and style of working. Windows can be docked, tab-linked, or hidden to make more room for the windows you use most often.

The most important features to notice in the IDE are:

Code Editor window: Enter your J# code here. It uses color-coding to highlight keywords and comments and has many powerful features such as automatic code completion to make programming faster and reduce errors. The Code Editor's new powerful refactoring tools allow you to intelligently manipulate your source code; for example, you can extract code and automatically use it to create a method.
Solution Explorer window: Displays a view of all the files that make up your project.

Note

You’ll occasionally see the term solution. A solution can contain several projects, such as a Windows application and a class library. Solutions are used more frequently in the Professional version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Project window: Contains the specific items in the project such as files and folders.
Properties window: Displays the properties for selected items. Properties define characteristics of certain objects, such as the location of a button, the name of a form, the style of text, and so on. The appearance of the Properties window varies depending on the object currently selected.
Forms Designer window: Provides the design surface for the application’s user interface. A typical Windows application consists of a form; this contains the controls and displays text that make up the application. This window is initially hidden behind the Code Editor, You can view either the source code or this visual display of your application, switching between both views as you work.
Toolbox window: Contains vertical tabs that categorize design-time controls, ActiveX® controls, HTML fragments, objects, and text fragments. This window is opened when you click the Toolbox tab, and can be docked in the IDE, or will slide out of view when you’re not using it.
Toolbox item tabs: Each configurable tab contains a set of components that can be added to the project by simply dragging them to the Windows Form. For example, dragging a Timer component will create the code that manages a background timer in your application.
Task List window: Lists the tasks required to complete solution development, such as errors in the Code Editor, compiler errors, shortcuts to lines of code, and user-entered tasks.
Class View: A way to view your project as a set of classes and their methods. This is a logical view of your project, independent of the way you choose to organize your files in source files.
Output window: Displays information generated by the build process.
Errors List windows: Displays compilation errors.

Displaying Information About the Development Environment

For first time J# users or people who are used to developing applications on UNIX or Linux, it is helpful to see the environmental variable settings such as the application path. You can review many of these settings from Visual Studio.

To display read-only information about your machine and J# IDE
On the Help menu, click About Visual J# 2005 Express Edition. On the About Microsoft Development window, click System Info. The System Information dialog box displays settings about hardware and software that is installed on this computer. The Hardware Resources node describes memory, DMA, and I/O resource settings. The Components node describes configuration settings for hardware such as your CD-ROM. The Software Environment node describes the state of various software drivers, as well as, current software settings for applications that are installed on this computer. The Internet Settings node displays the Internet browser configuration such as security settings. The Office Applications node shows settings for your currently installed version of Microsoft Office (if applicable). On the System Information dialog box, open the Software Environment node, and click Environment Variables. A list box displays various environment variables such as OS which describes the current operating system and Path that identifies the system file and application paths that are available for your J# applications. Review the Variables and their corresponding Value settings from list box. For viewing extra long Value fields, for example the value for Path, select the Value, and on the Edit menu, click Copy. In an empty Notepad window, paste the value. If you can change these variables from the Control Panel, you must exit and restart Visual Studio to refresh the Values.

On the Help menu, click About Visual J# 2005 Express Edition.
On the About Microsoft Development window, click System Info.

The System Information dialog box displays settings about hardware and software that is installed on this computer. The Hardware Resources node describes memory, DMA, and I/O resource settings. The Components node describes configuration settings for hardware such as your CD-ROM.

The Software Environment node describes the state of various software drivers, as well as, current software settings for applications that are installed on this computer. The Internet Settings node displays the Internet browser configuration such as security settings. The Office Applications node shows settings for your currently installed version of Microsoft Office (if applicable).
On the System Information dialog box, open the Software Environment node, and click Environment Variables.

A list box displays various environment variables such as OS which describes the current operating system and Path that identifies the system file and application paths that are available for your J# applications.
Review the Variables and their corresponding Value settings from list box.
For viewing extra long Value fields, for example the value for Path, select the Value, and on the Edit menu, click Copy.
In an empty Notepad window, paste the value.

If you can change these variables from the Control Panel, you must exit and restart Visual Studio to refresh the Values.

Visual J# Express Development Environment

Features of the Visual J# Express Development Environment

Displaying Information About the Development Environment

Related Sections

See Also

Other Resources

Additional resources