How to make a advanced tabbed notepad in Visual Basic 2010/ 2008

Hello Programmers! In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make an advanced tabbed notepad in visual basic 2010 / 2008. (PDF and actual programme is at the bottom!
Let’s get started.

I will split this tutorial in to two (2) parts

PART A the design and behaviour of our application

And PART B the coding.

Let’s get started.
PART A –Design & Behaviour

Open VB and go to File>New Project>Windows Form Application> Call it whatever you like.

OK Click Form 1 and resize it to around 683,448. Then in the properties panel of Form 1 were it says minimum size change that to 683,448. Now in the properties panel go to MaximizeBox Change this to False. Then change the text of Form 1 to whatever you like.
OK done.
Now insert:

1 Menustrip
1 Tabcontrol.
1 SavefileDialog

OK now on the Menustrip we want:

File
Edit
Format
About
Now Under File we want:

Add Tab
Remove Tab
Open
Save
Exit

Under Edit we want:

Undo
Redo
(Then right click insert separator)
Cut
Copy
Paste
Delete
Clear All
Select All

Under Format:

Font
Colour

(We don’t need anything under About)

Now moving on to the Tabcontrol (TC) make the TC 667, 52 (width x Height) in the properties menu. OK now where it says Name Change it to Tabcontrol2. Then where it says Anchor change this to left, top, right. Now in the TC properties menu where it says collection click it and add another tab. Now we name each tab:

Home
Edit
Format

(In the right order please)
It should now look like this.

Image2..JPG 25.34K 747 downloads

OK Now let’s go back to the Menustrip:
Click File>Add Tab>
Now when you click Add tab go to its properties. In the properties at the bottom it says ShortcutKey change it to Ctrl+Shift +A. Now you can do the same for the rest but make sure that you give them different shortcut keys. Here is mine.

image3..JPG 18.8K 584 downloads
Now we need some buttons in TabControl2 Under the Home Tab
Add 4 Buttons
Name them:

Add Tab
Remove Tab
Open
Save

OK Once you have added the buttons you might want to make sure that they are all same size this is what we do at the top of Visual Basic there is a bar called Layout

layoutbar..JPG 17.04K 344 downloads
This one if you don’t have it go to View>Toolars>layout
Now click all Four Buttons. (Ctrl and click each one)
Then on the toolbar bar click:
Remove horizontal spacing.

Align:
Middles
Top
Bottoms

Then

Make same size
Make same width
Make same Height
You can’t see the text but hover over each one and a tooltip will show.

Now you can add more buttons for the rest of the tabs (Edit, Format) your adding the same data from the menustrip once you done it should look like this.

image5..JPG 26.94K 544 downloads

OK Last but not least add another tabcontrol then click the white triangle in the top right corner of the TC and click Remove Tab (both of them). Then in the properties click Anchor and set to Top, Left,right,Bottom.
Then resize the Tabcontrol to fit the document. Should now look like this:

image 6..JPG 32.3K 734 downloads
Now last this is go to top of VB Go to Project>Add New Item>About Box
Edit the information in the about box it is pretty straight forward.

PART B - CODING

Now Double click Form1
At the top where it says

 Public Class Form1

add at the bottom

 Dim I As Integer = 1

Now under

 Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load


    End Sub

We want to add

  Dim Edit As New RichTextBox

        TabControl1.TabPages.Add(1, "Page " & I)

        TabControl1.SelectTab(I - 1)

        Edit.Name = "TE"

        Edit.Dock = DockStyle.Fill

        TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Add(Edit)

        I = I + 1

Now this is going to add a page for us in the TabControl1
Now go back the design view and click the menustrip1 and under File double click Add Tab
And this code

 Dim Edit As New RichTextBox

        TabControl1.TabPages.Add(1, "Page " & I)

        TabControl1.SelectTab(I - 1)

        Edit.Name = "TE"

        Edit.Dock = DockStyle.Fill

        TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Add(Edit)

        I = I + 1

If you noticed this is the same code as the first one hehe:P:P
Now go back and double click Remove Tab
Add this code

    If TabControl1.TabCount = 1 Then

            MsgBox("Error You Can't Remove The Last Page", MsgBoxStyle.Critical)

‘Now you can change the message to whatever you like

‘This code will not allow us to remove the last tabpage which automatically loads

‘If it did an error would occur.


            Exit Sub

        Else


        End If


        TabControl1.TabPages.RemoveAt(TabControl1.SelectedIndex)

‘This bottom code is telling it to remove the selected tab and countdown minus (-) 1 (one)

        TabControl1.SelectTab(TabControl1.TabPages.Count - 1)

        I = I - 1

Now go back to Menustrip1 and Double click Open add this

 Dim OpenFileDialog1 As New OpenFileDialog

        Dim AllText As String = "", LineOfText As String = ""

‘This bottom code is telling it to search each and ever file type

        OpenFileDialog1.Filter = "All Files|*.*"

‘This bottom code basically shows the opendialog box

        OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog()

        Try

            FileOpen(1, OpenFileDialog1.FileName, OpenMode.Input)

            Do Until EOF(1)

                LineOfText = LineInput(1)

                AllText = AllText & LineOfText & vbCrLf

            Loop

            CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).Text = AllText

        Catch


        Finally

            FileClose(1)

        End Try

Now go back and double click save add this code

  Dim SaveFileDialog1 As New SaveFileDialog

‘The bottom code is shows which file types we can save it as you can add

‘More file types by using the same method

‘You can add html and other types if you like

        SaveFileDialog1.Filter = "Rich Text Files|*.rtf|Text Files|*.txt"

‘This tells it to show the dialog basically remember when you got

‘Something called “show Dialog” You can’t go back to the main programme without ‘closing

‘The first dialog showing

        SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog()

        FileOpen(1, SaveFileDialog1.FileName, OpenMode.Output)

        PrintLine(1, CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).Text)

        FileClose(1)

OK now go back to menustrip1 and double click Exit add this:

  Dim msg As String

        Dim title As String

        Dim style As MsgBoxStyle

        Dim response As MsgBoxResult

        msg = "Are you sure?"   ' shows your message you can change it

        style = MsgBoxStyle.Information Or _

            MsgBoxStyle.YesNo ‘The dialog will be a Yes No answer

        title = "Youtite"   ' What did you name you application?

        response = MsgBox(msg, style, title)

        If response = MsgBoxResult.Yes Then   ' if the user chooses Yes it is going to execute the Me.Close() which will close the programme

‘Else it will still show up.

            

            Me.Close()

        Else

            

            Me.Show()

        End If

Now back to Menustrip1 Click on Edit
Double Click undo
Enter this:

 CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).Undo()

Ok now the code for this is simple for the rest of the items on Menustri p1 Edit

Just copy that and at the after the (dot) . Put like Redo() Select All () etc..
For Delete the code is same as cut here:

 CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).cut()

No clear All is different
Go to Menu strip1 and Edit>Clear all
Enter this code:

 

‘This will emplty the selected Tab text

CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).Text = “”

Now move on to Format
Double Click Font
Enter this

 If TabControl1.TabCount = 0 Then


        End If


        Dim FS As New FontDialog

        FS.ShowDialog()

        CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).Font = FS.Font

Now go back to Format and Double click Colour
Enter this:

 If TabControl1.TabCount = 0 Then



        End If

        Dim FC As New ColorDialog

        FC.ShowDialog()

        CType(TabControl1.SelectedTab.Controls.Item(0), RichTextBox).ForeColor = FC.Color

Now last but Not least the about Box we made we need to call that:
Go to Menustrip one and double click about
Add:

 AboutWordPad.ShowDialog()

‘This basically shows the dialog

Now for those buttons Just copy and paste the same code that we have just inserted for the right buttons and then you’re done!

If you need any help just ask here or PM me I will be happy to help.

(Sorry for any bad bad mistakes)

You can see the one I made and the PDF of this document

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( YouTube - Advanced Notepad in Visual Basic 2010 / 2008.) <<