I remember the first time I needed to create a dialog box in a .NET application that I was writing in C#. Being a long-time Visual Basic programmer, I assumed that this could easily be accomplished by using a dialog box template included with Visual Studio.NET. To my surprise, no such form template existed for C#, although one does for Visual Basic 2005. After wading through several books and Web pages filled with information on Windows Forms 2.0 programming, a basic set of steps became apparent to me for manually converting a .NET form into a Windows dialog box:

1. Add a Form to your .NET project and name it ¡°DialogBoxForm¡±.

2. Drop two buttons in the lower right-hand area of the Form and name them ¡°OKButton¡± and ¡°CancelButton¡±.

3. Change the following properties of the Form to adjust its appearance and behavior to be like a standard dialog box:

These properties can be set using the Properties window for the form, or using code placed in the Form¡¯s Load event:

        Me.AcceptButton = OKButton
        Me.CancelButton = CancelButton
        Me.FormBorderStyle = Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.FixedDialog
        Me.HelpButton = True
        Me.MaximizeBox = False
        Me.MinimizeBox = False
        Me.ShowInTaskbar = False
        Me.ShowIcon = False
        Me.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterParent

4. Add the following button click event handlers to the Form:

    Private Sub OKButton_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _    

     ByVal e As EventArgs)
        ¡® User clicked the OK button
        Me.DialogResult = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK
    End Sub    

    Private Sub CancelButton_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _    

     ByVal e As EventArgs)
        ¡® User clicked the Cancel button
        Me.DialogResult = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.Cancel
    End Sub

5. Add properties that you need to move data into and out of the dialog box as you would for any Form:

    Private _LoginName As String
    Private _LoginPassword As String    

    Public Property LoginName() As String
        Get
            Return _LoginName
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _LoginName = value
        End Set
    End Property    

    Public Property LoginPassword() As String
        Get
            Return _LoginPassword
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _LoginPassword = value
        End Set
    End Property

6. Show the dialog box modally by calling the ShowDialog() of the form:

    Public Sub ShowDialogBox()
        Dim dialog As New DialogBoxForm    

        dialog.LoginName = ¡°JDMurray¡±
        dialog.LoginPassword = String.Empty    

        If dialog.ShowDialog() = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then
            Debug.WriteLine(¡°Login Name: ¡° & dialog.LoginName)
            Debug.WriteLine(¡°Password: ¡° & dialog.LoginPassword)
        Else
            ¡® User clicked the Cancel button
        End If
    End Sub

7. To show the dialog box modelessly, call the Show() method of DialogBoxForm instead. You will need to add an event handler to the Close event of DialogBoxForm to know when the user closes the dialog box:

    Public Sub ShowDialogBox()
        Dim dialog As DialogBoxForm = New DialogBoxForm
        dialog.LoginName = ¡°JDMurray¡±
        dialog.Password = String.Empty
        AddHandler dialog.FormClosed, AddressOf dialog_FormClosed
        dialog.Show()    

        ¡® The Show() method returns immediately
    End Sub    

    Private Sub dialog_FormClosed(ByVal sender As Object, _    

     ByVal e As FormClosedEventArgs)
        ¡® This method is called when the user closes the dialog box
    End Sub

discuss this topic to forum