In this article, I will show how to add resources to a windows application using tools provided by the Visual studio 2005 integrated development environment.

Walkthrough:

Open a new project, then select the project properties menu item at the end of the "Project" menu as the figure shows below:



Figure 1

The properties page will appear, it looks like as follow:



Figure 2

Select resource tab. You can remark a menu just above the resources grid. I mean this.

Figure 3

This menu helps us add resources like strings, text files, bitmaps images and remove them without using a single line of code.

Figure 4

Now, you can add resource into your application. For example, my project needs a given image to be used. I select the Add resource file, then, Add existing file; finally, I can add an image file, via the open dialog box, into the application resources as below.



Figure 5

It is very important to save all changes before closing the properties pages. Now, the question is, how can I use the new resource in my application?

Add a picture box control into your project, then, you see this small snippet just in the control right corner above. Select it and choose project resource as the figure shows.



Figure 6

Click OK and the picture box will display the given image. That's it

Good dotneting!!!