The MouseDown Event in VB .NET

The MouseDown event is available to many controls on the form. A Form can detect
when the mouse was held down on it; a textbox can detect when the mouse was
held down inside of it; and a Button can detect which mouse button was held
down to do the clicking.

We’ll see how it all works right now.

First, delete the all but one of the buttons on your form. (You can right click
on a control to delete it. If you haven’t been following along from the previous
lesson, then just create a new project. Add a Button to your form, and leave
iton the default name of Button1.)

Go back to your coding window, and delete any code for the button on your form.
Delete any Handles code except for Handles Button1.Click. Your coding window
should look something like this one (we’ve used an underscore to spread the
code out over two lines):

Right at the top of the code window, it says Button1 and
Click. (Visual Studio 2015 user will see another drop down box to the
left of Button1, which should say Events, the name of your project.) The lightning
bolt next to Click signifies that it is an Event. If you click the drop down
box, you’ll see a list of other available events:

Scroll down and find the MouseDown event, as in the image above.
When you click on it, a new code stub appears, this one (ours looks a bit messy):

This is a Private Subroutine called Button1_MouseDown. Notice that it
Handles the Button1 MouseDown event, and not Button1.Click.

Exploring the Event Arguments

In between the round brackets of the Subroutine, we still have sender As
Object. But we have a new argument now:

e As MouseEventArgs

The name of the variable is still e. But the type of Object being stored
inside of the e variable is different:

MouseEventArgs

This stands for Mouse Events Arguments. What is being stored inside of the
e variable is information about the Mouse Event: Did you click a button,
if so which one?

The only thing you need to do to detect which button was pressed is to access
a property of the e variable. Let’s see how to do that.

Which Button was Clicked?

Inside of the Button1_MouseDown Subroutine, type the following code:

If e.Button = MouseButtons.Right Then

MessageBox.Show(“Right Button Clicked”)

End If

As soon as you type the letter “e”, you’ll see this pop up box:

To detect which button was clicked, you need the first Property
on the list: Button. Double click this property to add it to your code.
Then after you typed the equals sign, another pop up list appears. This one:

This is a list of available buttons that VB can detect. Left and
Right are the ones you’ll use most often.

When you’ve added the If Statement, your coding window should
look something like this:

When you’re finished writing your code, run your programme. Click the button
with your Left mouse button and nothing will happen. Click it with the Right
mouse button and you should see the message box display.

MouseDown and the Form

Stop your programme. When you are returned to the coding environment, click
the down arrow of Button1 at the top of the code. You’ll see a drop down box
like this:

Select the one highlighted in the image, “Form1 Events”.
In the Events box to the right, select MouseDown from the list of available
events. A new code stub will appear:

This time, we have a Private Subroutine called Form1_MouseDown.
The two arguments are exactly the same as before. The difference is that now
this code Handles the MouseDown event for something called MyBase. (This
is an object that refers to the code for Public Class Form1.)

The important thing to bear in mind is that we now have a way to detect when
a mouse button was clicked on the form itself.

Add the following code inside of Form1_MouseDown:

If e.Button = MouseButtons.Right Then

MessageBox.Show(“You clicked on the Form”)

End If

The only thing that has changed is the Message Box! The If Statement
is exactly the same. Run your programme and test it out. Click anywhere on your
Form, and you should see the new message box. However, if you right click on
the button, you’ll get the old message box. Although the button is on the Form,
this is considered a separate control from the Form itself. So it has its own
events.

You can detect where on the Form the mouse was when the right mouse button
was click. Amend your code for Form1_MouseDown. Change it to this:

Dim xPos As Integer
Dim yPos As Integer

If e.Button = MouseButtons.Right Then

xPos = e.X
yPos = e.Y
MessageBox.Show(“The X Position is ” & xPos & ” The Y
Position is ” & yPos)

End If

First, we’re setting up two integer variable, xPos and yPos. After
that we have the same If Statement as before:

If e.Button = MouseButtons.Right Then

End If

Inside of the If Statement, we’re using the X and Y properties of the e variable:

xPos = e.X
yPos = e.Y

The X property returns how far across, from left to right, the mouse is; the
Y property returns how far down, from top to bottom, the mouse is. These values
are assigned to our two variables. The result is displayed in a message box.

When you’ve wrote the code, run your programme and test it out.
Right click anywhere on your form. The new message box should display, telling
you where the mouse was when the right button was held down.

Click near the top of the form and you’ll see the Y position number go down
in value; Click near the bottom of the form and you’ll see it go up in value.
The very top of the form (or a control) has a Y value of zero.

Click from left to right and you’ll see the X numbers go up in value. The very
left edge of your form has an X value of zero.

In the next part, we’ll explore the KeyDown event.

Learn about the KeyDown Event in VB .NET –>