Introduction

   Application and User Settings have been given a facelift in VB2005.   One of the questions that has appeared in VBCity Forums many times over the past few years is the one where someone wants to know how to save user choices, UI settings or other small items of data that have been input by users.  Traditionally, going back to Classic VB days this has been done by using the SaveSettings and GetSettings functions which access the Registry to write and read back the data.

   This approach still works and can be used in all versions of VB.NET, including 2005.     While it's not difficult to use, I've never thought of it as particularly intuitive either. So it's good to see that in Visual Studio 2005 there is a very easy to use visual feature available from the Project Properties tab.  You are then able to navigate through the available settings in code with ease, thanks to the My.Settings feature.  

   The examples shown in this article are designed for Beginner Level developers as an introduction to the topic.    Fire up a new VB 2005 Windows Forms Project and we'll put My.Settings through its paces.

Accessing the Settings Editor at Design Time

    You can use the Settings Editor at design time to set up the names and Types of data for which  you want to be able to store settings.  To access this editor, use your favourite technique to get to the project's Properties window, e.g. by right clicking the project name and selecting "Properties":

or from the main menu:

  The initial view of the Settings Tab in the Project's property Pages will look like this:

     Creating new Settings is a very easy process as we will see.