How best to lay-out this inventory program

Question

I am a beginning programer and am working on creating a program that will allow people to keep track of inventory in their house. The program accepts barcodes scanned over a TCP/IP connection to add to the information.

Currently, I have essentially all of the functions on the main form and am wondering if there is a better way to lay this out.

I'll give a brief explanation of what the buttons do starting from top left.

File - Opens menu with option to Exit

Scan Barcode - For testing purposes, open TCP/IP connection to scan barcode (Opens in new window)

Help - Display menu with option to view IP address to ease the connection of TCP client(Opens in new window)

Search - Searches items in the inventory (The big window)

Refresh - Refreshes the list based on a database

Generate Barcode - Converts user entered string into Barcode image to print onto labels.(Opens in new window)

Remove Selected - Remove selected item from the inventory [database].

Add item - Add item to inventory database (Opens in new window)

Answer 1

1. The right align of the search bar looked odd.
2. Buttons that operate on selected rows should be separated from other actions.
3. Checkboxes make it obvious that you can select the rows.
4. I increased the height of the search bar to emphasize it.
5. I would let the search button act as a refresh button if the search input isn't modified (of course it would need to change its icon accordingly).

Answer 2

You could position the Buttons separately to indicate Primary Actions and other Actions could be positioned elsewhere.

If you want, you could try using something like a Material Design - Floating Action Button (However, you're developing for Windows, and this would mean not following the general design) since you seem to have 2 primary actions, namely:

1. Add Item

2. Scan Barcode

If you need inspiration, try using the Web Version of Any.do

I feel the Strike animation to indicate a Done activity is amazing!