Wrox Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 3 , “ Customization, ” explains how to customize the IDE.

It tells how you can create, hide, and rearrange menus and toolbars to make it easy to use the tools that you find most useful.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 5 , “ WPF Designer, ” explains how to use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) form designer. This chapter is similar to Chapter 4 except that it covers WPF forms instead of Windows Forms.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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 runtime, how to set complex property values, and how to use useful properties that are common to many different kinds of controls.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 12 , “ Using WPF Controls, ” gives more detail about how you can use WPF controls. This chapter is similar to Chapter 9 except that it deals with WPF controls instead of Windows Forms controls.
Chapter 13 , “ WPF Windows, ” describes the windows that WPF applications use in place of Windows Forms. This chapter is similar to Chapter 10 except that it deals with WPF controls instead of Windows Forms controls.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 16 , “ Operators, ” describes the operators a program uses to perform calculations. These include mathematical operators ( + , * , \ ), string operators ( & ), and Boolean operators ( And , Or ).
Chapter 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.
Chapter 18 , “ Program Control Statements, ” describes the statements that a Visual Basic program uses to control code execution.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 20 , “ Database Controls and Objects, ” explains how to use the standard Visual Basic database controls.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
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..
Chapter 25 , “ OOP Concepts, ” explains the fundamental ideas behind object-oriented programming (OOP). It describes the three main features of OOP: encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 27 , “ Namespaces, ” explains namespaces. It discusses how Visual Studio uses namespaces to categorize code and to prevent name collisions.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 29 , “ Generics, ” explains templates that you can use to build new classes designed to work with specific data types.
Chapter 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.