This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Pau Laudeman. Original Post: Windows Forms - Basic events in the Lifecycle of Forms and Controls Feed Title: Paul Laudeman Feed URL: /error.htm?aspxerrorpath=/blogs/paul.laudeman/rss.aspx Feed Description: Helping You to Make "Smart Clients" Smarter! Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Pau Laudeman Latest Posts From Paul Laudeman

Recently, a community member posted a question to the WindowsForms.NET site forums asking about the basic events that are fired in Forms and User Controls in Windows Forms applications. After digging through the MSDN documentation and various other sources (amazingly, it doesn't seem like the complete list is documented in any one place), I came up with the following:

Form Events:

• Construtor
• Load
• Layout
• Activated
• Paint­
• Closing
• Closed
• Deactivate
• Dispose

and for Controls:

• Enter 
• GotFocus 
• Leave 
• Validating 
• Validated 
• LostFocus

I also discovered a code sample called EventSpy written by Urs Eichmann that you can use to view and filter the events to see in real time to see how your application is behaving. This is really helpful to use as you can see which events are fired and in what order as your application runs. Very cool!