Introduction

In this chapter, we will have fun by drawing lines, ovals, and pictures on the form. You will learn about the picture box and image controls. Moreover, you will learn how to draw points, lines, boxes, circles, and ellipses.

Picture Box & Image Controls

The Picture box control and the Image control can display a graphic from a bitmap, icon, or metafile, as well as enhanced metafile, JPEG, or GIF files. Both these controls allow you to place pictures, from graphics files, on a form. The two controls differ in these respects:

• The Image control uses fewer system resources and repaints faster than a Picture box control.
• The Picture box control offers more flexibility by supporting additional methods and properties.

Both the image control and picture box control support the following graphics file formats:

• Bitmaps Files (.BMP extension)
• Cursors (.CUR extension)
• Graphics Interchange Format Files (.GIF extension)
• Icons (.ICO extension)
• JPEG Files (.JPEG or .JPG extension)
• Meta Files (.WMF or .EMF extension)
• Run length encoded files with the .RLE extension