This book is for anyone who wants to write good Visual Basic 2008 code – even if you have never programmed before.

Writing good code can be a challenge, there are so many options, especially in a language like Visual Basic. If you want to really get the best from a programming language you need to know which features work best in which situations and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It is this understanding that makes the difference between coding and coding well.

Beginning VB 2008 has been written to teach you how to use the Visual Basic programming language to solve problems. From the earliest chapters, and from the first introductory concepts, you'll be looking at real-world programming challenges and learning how Visual Basic can be used to overcome them. As you progress through the book the problems become more involved and interesting while the solutions become correspondingly more complex and powerful as Visual Basic features interact to achieve the results that you want.

By the time you've finished reading this book and worked through the sample exercises, you'll be a confident and very competent Visual Basic programmer. You will still have many explorations of the .NET Framework API to look forward to in your future career, but you will have a firm foundation to build from and you will know exactly where to go to find the things that you need to progress confidently in your projects.

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Visual Basic 2008 offers powerful new features, and Accelerated VB 2008 is the fastest path to mastering them, and the rest of Visual Basic, for both experienced Visual Basic programmers moving to VB 2008 and programmers moving to Visual Basic from another object–oriented language. Many books introduce VB, but very few also explain how to use it optimally with the .NET common language runtime (CLR). This book teaches both core Visual Basic language concepts and how to wisely employ VB idioms and object–oriented design patterns to exploit the power of VB and the CLR.

Accelerated VB 2008 is both a rapid tutorial and a permanent reference. You’ll quickly master VB syntax while learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You’ll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable, and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to design and code VB when this book will show you how to do things the right way, right from the start?

• Comprehensively and concisely explains both Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Basic 2008 features
• Focuses on the language itself and on how to use Visual Basic 2008 proficiently for all .NET application development
• Concentrates on how VB features work and how to best use them for robust, high–performance code

What you’ll learn

• How VB works with and exploits the CLR
• How to use arrays and collections
• How to handle events with delegates
• How to design and use generic types and methods
• How to thread efficiently and robustly
• How the new VB 2008 anonymous types, lamba expressions, and extension methods work and how to use them

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This book continues to reflect our experience that topics once considered too advanced can be taught in the first course. The text addresses metalanguages explicitly as the formal means of specifying programming language syntax.

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Teach yourself the fundamentals of working with Visual Basic 2008 one step at a time. With STEP BY STEP, you work at your own pace through hands-on, learn-by-doing exercises. Whether you re a beginning programmer or new to this specific language, you ll understand the core capabilities and fundamental techniques for Visual Basic 2008 and rapidly build robust, elegant applications. Each chapter puts you to work, showing you how, when, and why to use the latest features of Visual Basic guiding you each step of the way as you create actual components and working applications for Windows. You ll also explore data management and Web-based development topics. PLUS get practice files with sample code and data sets on the companion CD.

Key Book Benefits

Covers the latest enhancements and features of Visual Basic 2008

Provides step-by-step guidance on how to use Visual Basic 2008 with Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 to create smart-client and Web applications

Features easy-to-follow, logically planned lessons in the popular STEP BY STEP format ideal for anyone with fundamental programming skills

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Written for experienced developers, this guide explains how to work with the .NET framework classes of controls and build custom controls for Windows forms and web form pages.

One of the reasons I wrote this book is to address the needs of .NET developers who require controls that don’t yet exist. Most businesses have specific needs that only a custom control can satisfy—from custom corporate e- mail plug-ins, to a custom control that manages user security in various applications, to a reusable intranet control that tracks customer calls and routes them to the appropriate location.

Another reason I wrote this book is that you might just have the next “big idea” for a commercial control that can be sold to developers around the globe but don’t know where to start. The booming market for controls shows there is always room for another tool that saves developers precious resources.

And finally, I wrote this book to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of advanced developers. If you’re like me, you thrive in finding and understanding the cornucopia of new classes and methodologies in .NET that can’t be found in other books. Understanding the .NET Framework classes for controls and designers not only makes you a more valued professional but also allows you to take an idea from one source and meld it with another in ways not done before—the so called ah-ha effect. If you fall into any or all of these three categories, this book is for you.

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It is clear that Visual Studio Team System is the future of development from Microsoft’s perspective. Development is no longer a personal pursuit by one developer in a darkened room; it is a collective effort by a team of peers. VSTS supports this broader vision by providing a complete collaboration platform for the entire project team. VSTS takes a services-oriented approach leveraging Windows SharePoint Services and SQL Server Business Intelligence Suite. Additionally, VSTS brings the life cycle to life by making it part of the integrated suite.

For those seeking to use test-driven development, VSTS is the tool for you. If you’re an architect, there is a new set of domain-specific modeling tools that makes it easy to visualize systems, determine application relationships, and deploy into a logical datacenter. For testers, Microsoft’s new suite of test tools provides a powerful web testing environment with virtually unlimited extensibility. In addition, the new load tools allow you to perform world-class scalability testing.

Even if you are just considering adopting VSTS, Pro Visual Studio Team System with Team Edition for Database Professionals, Second Edition will provide you with a comprehensive overview. Furthermore, you will be able to dive deep into any area with detailed descriptions, samples, and walkthroughs. Roll up your sleeves and get ready for a new way of developing solutions!

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This guide shows you how to build an interactive website from design to deployment. Packed with solutions to website programming problems, this book will have you building well-engineered, extendable ASP.NET websites quickly and easily.

ASP.NET Website Programming shows you how to build an interactive website from design to deployment. Packed with solutions to website programming problems, this book will have you building well-engineered, extendable ASP.NET websites quickly and easily. This book is for developers who use ASP.NET and Visual Basic .NET or use Visual Studio .NET Professional or above or Visual Basic .NET Standard.

The book concentrates on websites that focus on content. It does not show how to produce an e-commerce system, although a lot of the advice will apply to e-commerce sites. We could add a shopping basket module using the same foundations, for example. This book is different from most Wrox books, because we build a single working website throughout the book. However, each chapter stands alone and shows how to develop individual modules, which you can adapt for your own websites. We also suggest a framework that allows us to create modules and slot them in to the website quickly and easily.

The book is for developers who have a reasonable knowledge of ASP.NET, and want to apply that knowledge to building websites. You will get the most from this book if you have read a decent amount of Wrox's Beginning ASP.NET using Visual Basic .NET, or Professional ASP.NET and a VB.NET book. You should be comfortable using Visual Studio .NET to create ASP.NET projects, and that you know VB.NET.

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Beginning .NET Game Programming in VB .NET presents the work of David Weller (.NET Game evangelist at Microsoft) and a group of key Microsoft insiders who decided to write the ideal introduction to game programming for VB .NET programmers. Weller has switched his previous book to VB .NET and added a bonus chapter. The book has passed all internal Microsoft tests as to programming style. This thoroughly revised and improved version (including a bonus chapter) is the ideal way to get into .NET game programming using the VB .NET language.

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Fully updated to cover COM+ 1.0. Provides what you need to know about programming with COM+ and Visual Basic into concise and practical reading. CD-ROM includes fully searchable electronic version of book and sample applications. Softcover. DLC: Electronic data processing–Distributed processing.

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The most up–to–date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of VB 2008.

The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real–world web sites right from the beginning rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.

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