Programming Visual Basic 2005

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Programming Visual Basic 2005

Jesse Liberty, the author of Programming Visual Basic 2005, is a Microsoft technology master. Heis also a prolific writer and teacher of all things . NET,and his name is quickly becoming synonymous with great O Reilly books aboutMicrosoft programming technologies. I ve been a fan of his Programming C# title since the first edition, and am continuallyastounded by the vast knowledge he has retained and catalyzed about the .NETarchitecture. His talents continue to astound in this book, which isn t simplya search and replace of C# code with the VB 2005 syntax of his previous book,but rather a focused effort on the RAD ease of the VB language.

Besides the fact that for quite some time I have respectedMr. Liberty s deep understanding of and clarity in explaining all things .NET,what really put me in a good mood to read this book was his first sentence,acknowledging that, This is not your typical Visual Basic book. He goes on tosay that, This is not a reference book. This is not a primer on the language ...The goal of this book is to make you immediately productive, creating Windowsand Web applications using Visual Basic and its associated tools. I am happyto report that he has succeeded in his goal.

The book consists of three parts: Building WindowsApplications, Building Web Applications, and Programming with Visual Basic2005. The first part skips over the tired old here s the VS IDE tour and here sthe hello, world form and goes straight into a useful Windows Form-basedtabbed Rolodex-style application. This approach teaches readers not only how towork with Windows Forms, but also SQL, ADO.NET, common form controls, andcustom controls. Drawing with GDI+ and the Graphics class, as well as handlingfonts and mouse events, is taught via the construction of a custom clockdisplay control. A brief chapter on ActiveX COM wrappers caps Part 1.

Part 2 shows readers how to build several Web forms whilehighlighting the more time-saving design features in ASP.NET 2.0, such as thenew validation controls, Master Pages, personalization and roles, themes andskins, Web Parts, and even creating a custom BookInquiryList composite control.Part 2 closes with a 13-page chapter on creating Web services.

Part 3, the last and shortest section of the book,provides highlights of the Visual Studio IDE not a painful play-by-play, butrather a flyby over the Visual Studio landscape. This is followed by anoverview of the VB 2005 language, pointing out thelanguage s types, flow control statements, operators, arrays, queues, and dictionaries... even the new to VB 2005 concept of generics is allocated a few pages. Thefinal chapter provides a quick VB 2005-oriented tutorial on object-orientedprogramming. Constructors, Get/Set Accessors, Abstract Classes, and Interfacesare touched upon in rapid-fire succession. This last chapter obviously wasintended to round out the book for those VB ers new to object-orientedprogramming who are looking to understand just enough OOP to get them excitedenough to learn and experiment more with the concepts.

Jesse Liberty has obviously made it his career goal towrite more about Microsoft s latest .NET 2.0 platform and related tools thanany of his peers. In fact, after I completed reading this book, another of hisbooks (Programming ASP.NET, which heco-wrote with Dan Hurwitz) arrived in the mail (and it is nearly twice as thick).Given his seemingly non-stop output, one has to wonder when this guy eversleeps. In the meantime, VB enthusiasts will stay wide awake absorbing theknowledge that the author has poured into this book.

Mike Riley

Rating:

Title: Programming Visual Basic 2005

Author: JesseLiberty

Publisher: O Reilly

ISBN: 0-596-00949-6

Web Site: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progvb2005/index.html

Price: US$39.95

Page Count: 568