Step 2: Run Your Program

When you created a new solution, you actually built a program that runs. It doesn't do much yet—it just displays an empty window that shows Form1 in the title bar. But it does run, as you're about to find out.

For a video version of this topic, see Tutorial 1: Create a Picture Viewer in Visual Basic - Video 1 or Tutorial 1: Create a Picture Viewer in C# - Video 1.

To run your program

1. Press the F5 key or click the Start Debugging toolbar button, which appears as follows.

   Start Debugging toolbar button

   

2. The IDE runs your program, and a window appears. The following picture shows the program you just built. The program is running, and you will soon add to it.

   Windows Form application program running

   

3. Go back to the IDE, and look at the new toolbar.

   Debugging toolbar

   

4. Click the square Stop Debugging button or from the Debug menu, click Stop Debugging. The program stops running, and the window closes. You can also just close the open window to stop debugging.

   Note

   When you run your program from inside the IDE, it's called debugging because you typically do it to track down and fix bugs. It's a real program, and you can run it just like you run any other program.

To continue or review

• To go to the next tutorial step, see Step 3: Set Your Form Properties.

• To return to the previous tutorial step, see Step 1: Create a Windows Forms Application Project.