Mystalia Studios

Coding Studio

This is a tutorial for those who know a little about the concepts of programming and want to design windows applications in C#.

In this tutorial we will:

1. Learn about what the .NET framework is and why C# is worth the effort.
2. Download and Setup the software needed to make C# applications.
3. Get used to the Interface.

.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is needed to run any C#.NET application, fortunately anyone with vista should already have it installed. Some xp systems don’t have it and it can be downloaded and installed here. It is basically a library of code that exists so you don’t have to manually write it all yourself.

C#.NET
C#.net is comparable to PHP in style, if you know PHP then you will get on well with C#. If you want to program games, C# is a really easy way to go about it because of microsofts XNA Framework, which is a library full of game related code. C# is great to learn and you can get results quickly without too much effort.

Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition
This version of visual studio is absolutely free and downloadable from here. There are different types, so make sure you get Visual C#.NET 2008. You will also obviously need the .NET Framework installed if you don’t have it already.

The Interface
When you start up Visual C# 2008 express you will be greeted with the start page from which you can start a new project or continue one that you already have on the go. If it is your first time, go to File -> New Project. Select Windows Forms Application and name it Test, then click OK.

After it has loaded up, you will see a blank windows form and a bunch of tools down the left hand side. Over on the right you have the solution explorer and the properties menu. At the bottom there should be an error list (for debugging). Don’t worry about any of this right now, they will be covered later on.

Click the Button control in the Toolbox and click and drag a button on the windows form. Notice the Properties menu is now full of options. Change the Text option to “Hello” and then press Enter. Notice the text on the button has changed!

At the top there is a Green Triangle on its side, like a play button. Click this and test the application. Pretty easy right? Play with other controls and options and read the tooltips that appear when you hover your mouse over options and tools etc.

The next tutorial will cover some basic C# Syntax.