IMPORTANT: This page contains information about the third edition of this book: Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference. Other editions: Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference Visual Basic 2005 with .NET 3.0 Programmer's Reference

Part I: IDE

1. Introduction to the IDE

Explains how to get started using the Visual Studio integrated development environment. It tells how to configure the IDE for different kinds of development. It explains what Visual Basic projects and solutions are, and shows how to create, run, and save a new project.

2. Menus, Toolbars, and Windows

Describes the most useful and important commands available in the IDE's menus and toolbars. The IDE's menus and toolbars include hundreds of commands so this chapter covers only those that are the most useful.

3. Customization

Explains how to customize the IDE. It tells how you can create, hide, and rearrange menus and tool bars to make it easy to use the tools that you find most useful.

4. Windows Forms Designer

Describes the designer that you can use to build Windows Forms. It explains how to create, size, move, and copy controls. It tells how to set control properties and add code to respond to control events. It also explains how to use handy designer tools such as smart tags and command verbs.

5. WPF Designer

Explains how to use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) form designer. This chapter is similar to Chapter 4 except it covers WPF forms instead of Windows Forms.

6. Visual Basic Code Editor

Describes one of the most important windows used by developers: the code editor. It explains how to write code, set breakpoints, use code snippets, and get the most out of IntelliSense.

7. Debugging

Explains debugging tools provided by Visual Studio. It describes the debugging windows and explains such techniques as setting complex breakpoints to locate bugs.

Part II: Getting Started

8. Selecting Windows Forms Controls

Provides an overview of the Windows Forms controls that you can put on a form. It groups the controls by category to help you find the controls you can use for a particular purpose.

9. Using Windows Forms Controls

Gives more detail about how you can use Windows Forms controls. It explains how you can build controls at design time or run time, how to set complex property values, and how to use useful properties that are common to many different kinds of controls. It explains how to add event handlers to process control events and how to validate user-entered data.

10. Windows Forms

Describes the forms you use in a Windows Forms application. Forms are just another kind of control but their unique position in the application's architecture means they have some special properties and this chapter describes them.

11. Selecting WPF Controls

Provides an overview of WPF controls. It groups the controls by category to help you find the controls you can use for a particular purpose. This chapter is similar to Chapter 8 except it covers WPF controls instead of Windows Forms controls.

12. Using WPF Controls

Gives more detail about how you can use WPF controls. This chapter is similar to Chapter 9 except it deals with WPF controls instead of Windows Forms controls.

13. WPF Windows

Describes the windows that WPF applications use in place of Windows Forms. This chapter is similar to Chapter 10 except it deals with WPF controls instead of Windows Forms controls.

14. Program and Module Structure

Describes the most important files that make up a Visual Basic project. It describes some of the hidden files that projects contain and explains some of the structure that you can give to code within a module such as code regions and conditionally compiled code.

15. Data Types, Variables, and Constants

Explains the standard data types provided by Visual Basic. It shows how to declare and initialize variables and constants, and explains variable scope. It discusses value and reference types, passing parameters by value or reference, and creating parameter variables on the fly. It also explains how to create arrays, enumerated types, and structures.

16. Operators

Describes the operators a program uses to perform calculations. These include mathematical operators (+, *, \), string operators (&), and Boolean operators (And, Or). The chapter explains operator precedence and type conversion issues that arise when an expression combines more than one type of operator (for example, arithmetic and Boolean).

17. Subroutines and Functions

Explains how you can use subroutines and functions to break a program into manageable pieces. It describes routine overloading and scope. It also describes lambda functions and relaxed delegates, two features that are new in Visual Basic 2008.

18. Program Control Statements

Describes the statements that a Visual Basic program uses to control code execution. These include decision statements (If Then Else, Select Case, IIF, Choose) and looping statements (For Next, For Each, Do While, While Do, Repeat Until).

19. Error Handling

Explains error handling and debugging techniques. It describes the Try Catch structured error handler, in addition to the older On Error statement inherited from earlier versions of Visual Basic. It discusses typical actions a program might take when it catches an error. It also describes techniques for preventing errors and making errors more obvious when they do occur.

20. Database Controls and Objects

Explains how to use the standard Visual Basic database controls. These include database connection components that handle connections to a database, DataSet components that hold data within an application, and data adapter controls that move data between data connections and DataSets.

21. LINQ

Describes language integrated query (LINQ) features. It explains how you can write SQL-like queries to select data from or into objects, XML, or database objects. LINQ is a new feature in Visual Basic 2008.

22. Custom Controls

Explains how to build your own customized controls that you can then use in other applications. It covers the three main methods for creating a custom control: derivation, composition, and building from scratch. This chapter also provides several examples that you can use as a starting point for controls of your own.

23. Drag and Drop, and the Clipboard

Explains how a Visual Basic program can support drag-and-drop operations. It tells how your program can start a drag to another application, how to respond to drag operations started by another application, and how to receive a drop from another application. This chapter also explains how a program can copy data to and from the clipboard. Using the clipboard is similar to certain types of drag-and-drop operations, so these topics fit naturally in one chapter.

24. UAC Security

Describes the User Access security model used by the Vista operating system. With UAC security, all users run with reduced "normal" user privileges. If a program must perform tasks requiring administrator permissions, a UAC dialog box allows you to elevate the application's privilege level. This chapter describes UAC security and explains how you can mark a program for privilege elevation.

Part III: Object-Oriented Programming

25. OOP Concepts

Explains the fundamental ideas behind object-oriented programming (OOP). It describes the three main features of OOP: encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance. It explains the benefits of these features, and tells how you can take advantage of them in Visual Basic.

26. Classes and Structures

Explains how to declare and use classes and structures. It explains what classes and structures are, and it describes their differences. It shows the basic declaration syntax and tells how to create instances of classes and structures. It also explains some of the trickier class issues (such as private class scope, declaring events, and shared variables and methods).

27. Namespaces

Explains namespaces. It discusses how Visual Studio uses namespaces to categorize code and to prevent name collisions. It describes a project's root namespace, tells how Visual Basic uses namespaces to resolve names (such as function and class names), and demonstrates how you can add namespaces to an application yourself.

28. Collection Classes

Explains classes included in Visual Studio that you can use to hold groups of objects. It describes the various collection, dictionary, queue, and stack classes; tells how to make strongly typed versions of those classes; and gives some guidance on deciding which class to use under different circumstances.

29. Generics

Explains templates that you can use to build new classes designed to work with specific data types. For example, you can build a generic binary tree, and then later use it to build classes to represent binary trees of customer orders, employees, or work items.

Part IV: Graphics

30. Drawing Basics

Explains the fundamentals of drawing graphics in Visual Basic 2008. It describes the graphics namespaces and the classes they contain. It describes the most important of these classes, Graphics, in detail. It also describes the Paint event handler and other events that a program should use to keep its graphics up-to-date.

31. Brushes, Pens, and Paths

Explains the most important graphics classes after Graphics: Pen and Brush. It tells how you can use Pens to draw solid lines, dashed lines, lines with custom dash patterns, and lines with custom lengthwise stripe patterns. It tells how to use Brushes to fill areas with colors, hatch patterns, linear color gradients, color gradients that follow a path, and tiled images. This chapter also describes the GraphicsPath class, which represents a series of lines, shapes, curves, and text.

32. Text

Explains how to draw strings of text. It shows how to create different kinds of fonts, determine exactly how big text will be when drawn in a particular font, and use GDI+ functions to make positioning text simple. It shows how to use a StringFormat object to determine how text is aligned, wrapped, and trimmed, and how to read and define tab stops.

33. Image Processing

Explains how to load, modify, and save image files. It shows how to read and write the pixels in an image, and how to save the result in different file formats such as BMP, GIF, and JPEG. It tells how to use images to provide auto-redraw features, and how to manipulate an image pixel by pixel, both using a Bitmap's GetPixel and SetPixel methods and using "unsafe" access techniques that make pixel manipulation much faster than is possible with normal GDI+ methods.

34. Printing

Explains different ways that a program can send output to the printer. It shows how you can use the PrintDocument object to generate printout data. You can then use the PrintDocument to print the data immediately, use a PrintDialog control to let the user select the printer and set its characteristics, or use a PrintPreviewDialog control to let the user preview the results before printing.

35. Reporting

Provides an introduction to Crystal Reports, a tool that makes generating reports in Visual Basic relatively easy. The chapter explains the basics of Crystal Reports and steps through an example that builds a simple report.

Part V: Interacting with the Environment

36. Configuration and Resources

Describes some of the ways that a Visual Basic program can store configuration and resource values for use at runtime. Some of the most useful of these include environment variables, the Registry, configuration files, and resource files.

37. Streams

Explains the classes that a Visual Basic application can use to work with stream data. Some of these classes are FileStream, MemoryStream, BufferedStream, TextReader, and TextWriter.

38. File-System Objects

Describes classes that let a Visual Basic application interact with the file system. These include classes such as Directory, DirectoryInfo, File, and FileInfo that make it easy to create, examine, move, rename, and delete directories and files.

39. WCF

Describes the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), a library and set of tools that make building service-oriented applications easier. This chapter explains how to use new WCF attributes to easily define a service, how to use configuration files to configure the service, and how to use WCF tools to consume the service.

40. Useful Namespaces

Describes some of the more useful namespaces defined by the .NET Framework. It provides a brief overview of some of the most important System namespaces and gives more detailed examples that demonstrate regular expressions, XML, cryptography, reflection, threading, and Direct3D.

Appendixes

A. Useful Control Properties, Methods, and Events

Describes properties, methods, and events that are useful with many different kinds of controls.

B. Variable Declarations and Data Types

Summarizes the syntax for declaring variables. It also gives the sizes and ranges of allowed values for the fundamental data types.

C. Operators

Summarizes the standard operators such as +, <<, OrElse, and Like. It also gives the syntax for operator overloading.

D. Subroutine and Function Declarations

Summarizes the syntax for subroutine, function, and property procedure declarations.

E. Control Statements

Summarizes statements that control program flow, such as If Then, Select Case, and looping statements.

F. Error Handling

Summarizes both structured and "classic" error handling. It describes some useful exception classes and gives an example showing how to build a custom exception class.

G. Windows Forms Controls and Components

Describes standard Windows Forms controls and components provided by Visual Basic 2008. It explains the properties, methods, and events that I have found most useful when working with these components.

H. WPF Controls

Describes the controls that are placed in the toolbox by default when you build WPF applications. This is a relatively brief list to give you a feel for the kinds of controls that are available, rather than an in-depth description like the one provided for the standard Windows Forms controls in Appendix G.

I. Visual Basic Power Packs

Lists some additional tools that you can download to make Visual Basic development easier. This appendix describes some Visual Basic 6 compatibility tools provided by Microsoft, and some GotDotNet Power Packs that contain useful controls built in Visual Basic 2003.

J. Form Objects

Describes forms. In a very real sense, forms are just another type of component. They play such a key role in Visual Basic applications, however, that they deserve special attention in their own appendix.

K. Classes and Structures

Summarizes the syntax for declaring classes and structures, and defining their constructors and events.

L. LINQ

Summarizes LINQ syntax.

M. Generics

Summarizes the syntax for declaring generic classes.

N. Graphics

Summarizes the objects used to generate graphics in Visual Basic .NET. It covers the most useful graphics namespaces.

O. Useful Exception Classes

Lists some of the more useful exception classes defined by Visual Basic. You may want to throw these exceptions in your own code.

P. Date and Time Format Specifiers

Summarizes specifier characters that you can use to format dates and times. For example, they let you display a time using a 12-hour or 24-hour clock.

Q. Other Format Specifiers

Summarizes formatting for numbers and enumerated types.

R. The Application Class

Summarizes the Application class that provides properties and methods for controlling the current application.

S. The My Namespace

Describes the My namespace, which provides shortcuts to useful features scattered around other parts of the .NET Framework. It provides shortcuts for working with the application, computer hardware, application forms, resources, and the current user.

T. Streams

Summarizes Visual Basic's stream classes such as Stream, FileStream, MemoryStream, TextReader, CryptoStream, and so forth.

U. File-System Classes

Summarizes methods that an application can use to learn about and manipulate the file system. It explains classic Visual Basic methods such as FreeFile, WriteLine, and ChDir, as well as newer .NET Framework classes such as FileSystem, Directory, and File.

V. Index of Examples

Lists the 435 example programs available for download on the book's Web pages. This Appendix lists the examples by chapter and summaries the purpose and techniques demonstrated by each.