The jForm is analogous to the .Net Compact Framework's Form, but has a much more rich appearance, a several unique features.

First and foremost, the jForm serves as a hosting container for controls in the jControls CF35 library to ensure they appear properly and expose overlapped controls through their transparent pixels. For more information see Hosting jControls.

A new jForm is created when creating a new jControls CF35 project or by using Visual Studio's Add –> New Item menu to open the Add New Item dialog.

The following default jForm will appear in the Visual Studio designer as a full-screen 800×480 window.

jControls can then be dragged and dropped from the toolbox exactly as can be done with any other .Net Compact Framework controls.

By default, a close button appears in the top-right corner of the form. It can be shown/hidden with the ShowCloseButton property.

Its appearance can be customized by selecting it in the designer, and making changes using the Visual Studio property grid.

The Orientation property can be used to change the orientation of the screen from Rotate0 (default), Rotate90, Rotate180, or Rotate270.

The Fill property can be used to set the background appearance using solid colors, 2-color gradients, and Gaussian noise patterns. It is described in detail at Fills, Strokes, and Borders.

The Image property can be used to set a background image for the form. Currently the image does not scale with the size of the form and is always aligned to the top-left corner. Therefore, using an image the with the precise dimensions of the form is recommended.

At this time, jControls' image rendering has only been verified using 32-bit, 96 DPI .PNG images. It is recommend to restrict all images to that format until other formats have been verified.

jControls CF 35 supports the following image formats:

• PNG, 32-bit, 96DPI
• PNG, 24-bit, 96DPI
• PNG, 32-bit, 72DPI
• PNG, 24-bit, 72DPI
• JPG, 96DPI
• JPG, 72DPI
• BMP, 24-bit, 96DPI
• BMP, 24-bit, 72DPI

Performance Tip: If your image has no transparent pixels, be sure to set the jForm's Fill property to Transparent to avoid wasting resources drawing a background, only to have it replaced by the image.

The ShowTaskBar property can be used to set whether the Windows Task Bar is shown or hidden when the jForm is shown.

The ShowMouseCursor property can be used to set whether or not the mouse cursor is displayed when the jForm is shown.

jForm employs the same text features used by many of the other controls in the jControls CF35 library including ForeColor, TextOffset, TextAlignment, and TextWrap. See Text Features for more information. By default, the ForeColor property is set to transparent so the text does not appear.