Practical Standards for Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET, Second Edition

Chapter 15. User Input and Notification

Users communicate with a program by way of keyboard and mouse input. Programs communicate with users by way of sounds, message boxes, dialog boxes, and other visual cues. This two-way communication allows users to work smoothly with an application, getting their jobs done as easily as possible.

Note

Many different pointing devices are used today, including touch pads, tablets, and trackballs. For the most part, the concepts presented in this chapter apply not only to the mouse but to these other pointing devices as well. I’ll refer to the mouse when discussing interaction with the user’s pointing device in general for simplicity, however, and because the mouse is still the dominant pointing device in the ...