Getting Started with Visual Basic 2008
o Exploring the Integrated Development Environment
o The Start Page
o Starting a New Project
o Using the Windows Form Designer
o Creating Your First VB Application
o Making the Application More User-Friendly
o Understanding the IDE Components
o The IDE Menu
o ToolboxWindow
o Solution Explorer Window
o Properties Window
o Output Window
o Command and Immediate Windows
o Error List Window
o Setting Environment Options
o Building a Console Application
o Using Code Snippets
o Using the My Object
o The Bottom Line
Variables and Data Types
o Variables
o Declaring Variables
o Types of Variables
o The Strict, Explicit, and Infer Options
o Object Variables
o Variables as Objects
o Converting Variable Types
o Formatting Numbers
o User-Defined Data Types
o Examining Variable Types
o Why Declare Variables?
o A Variable’s Scope
o A Variable’s Lifetime
o Constants
o Arrays
o Declaring Arrays
o Initializing Arrays
o Array Limits
o Multidimensional Arrays
o Dynamic Arrays
o The Bottom Line
Programming Fundamentals
o Flow-Control Statements
o Decision Statements
o Loop Statements
o Nested Control Structures
o The Exit Statement2
o Writing and Using Procedures
o Subroutines
o Functions
o Arguments
o Argument-Passing Mechanisms
o Built-in Functions
o Custom Functions
o Passing Arguments and Returning Values
o More Types of Function Return Values
o Overloading Functions
o The Bottom Line
GUI Design and Event-Driven Programming
o On Designing Windows Applications
o Building a Loan Calculator
o Understanding How the Loan Calculator Application Works
o Designing the User Interface
o Programming the Loan Application
o Validating the Data
o Building a Calculator
o Designing the User Interface
o Programming the MathCalculator
o Using Simple Debugging Tools
o Exception Handling
o The Bottom Line
BasicWindows Controls
o The TextBox Control
o Basic Properties
o Text-Manipulation Properties
o Text-Selection Properties
o Text-Selection Methods
o Undoing Edits
o VB 2008 at Work: The TextPad Project
o Capturing Keystrokes
o Auto-complete Properties
o The ListBox, CheckedListBox, and ComboBox Controls
o Basic Properties
o Manipulating the Items Collection
o Selecting Items
o VB 2008 at Work: The ListBox Demo Project
o Searching the ListBox
o The ComboBox Control
o The ScrollBar and TrackBar Controls
o The ScrollBar Control
o The TrackBar Control
o The Bottom Line
Working with Forms
o The Appearance of Forms
o Properties of the Form Object
o Placing Controls on Forms
o Setting the TabOrder Property
o VB 2008 at Work: The Contacts Project
o Anchoring and Docking
o Splitting Forms into Multiple Pane6s
o The Form’s Events
o Loading and Showing Forms
o The Startup Form
o Controlling One Form from within Another
o Forms versus Dialog Boxes
o Building Dynamic Forms at Runtime
o The Form’s Controls Collection
o Creating Event Handlers at Runtime
o Designing Menus
o The Menu Editor
o The ToolStripMenuItem Properties
o Manipulating Menus at Runtime
o Iterating a Menu’s Items
o The Bottom Line
More Windows Controls
o The Common Dialog Controls
o Using the Common Dialog Controls
o The ColorDialog Control
o The FontDialog Control
o The OpenDialog and SaveDialog Controls
o The FolderBrowserDialog Control
o The RichTextBox Control
o The RTF Language
o Text Manipulation and Formatting Properties
o Methods
o Advanced Editing Features
o Cutting and Pasting
o Searching in a RichTextBox Control
o Handling URLs in the Document
o Displaying a Formatted Directory Listing
o VB 2008 at Work: The RTFPad Project
o The Bottom Line
The TreeView and ListView Controls
o Understanding the ListView, TreeView, and ImageList Controls
o Tree and List Structures
o The ImageList Control
o The TreeView Control
o Adding Nodes at Design Time
o Adding Nodes at Runtime
o VB 2008 at Work: The TreeViewDemo Project
o VB 2008 at Work: The Globe Project
o Scanning the TreeView Control
o The ListView Control
o The Columns Collection
o ListView Items and Subitems
o The Items Collection
o The SubItems Collection
o VB 2008 at Work: The ListViewDemo Project
o Sorting the ListView Control
o Processing Selected Items
o VB 2008 at Work: The CustomExplorer Project
o Additional Topics
o The Bottom Line
Building Custom Classes
o Classes and Objects
o What Is a Class?
o Classes Combine Code with Data
o Building the Minimal Class
o Adding Code to the Minimal Class
o Using Property Procedures
o Customizing Default Members
o Custom Enumerations
o Object Constructors
o Using the SimpleClass in Other Projects
o Firing Events
o Instance and Shared Methods
o A ‘‘Real’’ Class
o Parsing a Filename
o Converting Numbers to Strings
o Operator Overloading
o VB 2008 at Work: The LengthUnits Class
o The Bottom Line
Working with Objects
o Issues in Object-Oriented Programming
o Classes versus Objects
o Objects versus Object Variables
o Properties versus Fields
o Shared versus Instance Members
o Type Casting
o Early versus Late Binding
o Discovering a Variable’s Type
o Inheritance
o How to Apply Inheritance
o Polymorphism
o Building the Shape Class
o Who Can Inherit What?
o Parent Class Keywords
o Derived Class Keywords
o Parent Class Member Keywords
o Derived Class Member Keyword
o VB 2008 At Work: The InheritanceKeywords Project
o MyBase and MyClass
o The Class Diagram Designer
o The Bottom Line
Building CustomWindows Controls
o On Designing Windows Controls
o Enhancing Existing Controls
o Building the FocusedTextBox Control
o Building Compound Controls
o VB 2008 at Work: The ColorEdit Control
o Building User-Drawn Controls
o VB 2008 at Work: The Label3D Control
o Raising Custom Events
o Using the Custom Control in Other Projects
o Designing Irregularly Shaped Controls
o Customizing List Controls
o Designing Owner-Drawn ListBox Controls
o The Bottom Line
Handling Strings, Characters, and Dates
o Handling Strings and Characters
o The Char Class
o The String Class
o The StringBuilder Class
o VB 2008 at Work: The StringReversal Project
o VB 2008 at Work: The CountWords Project
o Handling Dates and Times
o The DateTime Class
o The TimeSpan Class
o The Bottom Line
Storing Data in Collections
o Advanced Array Topics
o Sorting Arrays
o Searching Arrays
o Performing Other Array Operations
o Array Limitations
o The ArrayList Collection
o Creating an ArrayList
o Adding and Removing ArrayList Items
o Sorting ArrayLists
o Searching ArrayLists
o Iterating an ArrayList
o The HashTable Collection
o VB 2008 at Work: The WordFrequencies Project
o The SortedList Collection
o VB 2008 at Work: The SortedList Project
o Other Collections
o The IEnumerator and IComparer Interfaces
o Enumerating Collections
o Custom Sorting
o Generic Collections
o The Bottom Line
Accessing Folders and Files
o The IO Namespace and the FileSystem Component
o Using the My.Computer.FileSystem Component
o Manipulating Folders and Files with the IO Namespace
o The Directory Class
o The File Class
o Drive, Folder, and File Properties
o The Path Class
o VB 2008 at Work: The CustomExplorer Project
o Accessing Files
o Using Streams
o VB 2008 at Work: The RecordSave Project
o The FileSystemWatcher Component
o Properties
o Events
o VB 2008 at Work: The FileSystemWatcher Project
o The Bottom Line
Serialization and XML
o Understanding Serialization Types
o Using Binary and SOAP Serialization
o Serializing Individual Objects
o Deserializing Individual Objects
o Serializing Collections
o Deserializing Collections
o Persisting a HashTable
o Persisting a TreeView’s Nodes
o Using XML Serialization
o Serializing and Deserializing Individual Objects
o Serializing Custom Objects
o Serializing ArrayLists and HashTables
o Working with XML Files
o Understanding XML Structure
o Editing XML Files
o The Bottom Line
Querying Collections and XML with LINQ
o What Is LINQ?
o LINQ Components
o LINQ to Objects
o Querying Collections
o Aggregating with LINQ
o LINQ to XML
o Traversing XML Documents
o Adding Dynamic Content to an XML Document
o LINQ to SQL
o Retrieving Data with the ExecuteQuery Method
o The Bottom Line
Printing with Visual Basic 2008
o The Printing Components
o The PrintDocument Control
o The PrintDialog Control
o The PageSetupDialog Control
o The PrintPreviewDialog Control
o Printer and Page Properties
o Retrieving the Printer Names
o Page Geometry
o VB 2008 at Work: The SimplePrintout Project
o VB 2008 at Work: The PageSettings Project
o Practical Printing Examples
o Printing Tabular Data
o Printing Plain Text
o Printing Bitmaps
o The Bottom Line
