Julia Case Bradley,
Mt. San Antonio College Anita C. Millspaugh,
Mt. San Antonio College
ISBN: 0073517208 Copyright year: 2009
Feature Summary
Each chapter begins with identifiable objectives and a brief overview. Numerous
coding examples as well as hands-on projects with guidance for the planning
and coding appear throughout. Thought-provoking feedback questions
give students time to reflect on the current topic and to evaluate their understanding
of the details. The end-of-chapter items include a chapter review,
questions, programming exercises, and four case studies.
Chapter 1, “Introduction to Visual Basic 2008,” introduces
Microsoft’s Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The
single environment is used for multiple programming languages. A stepby-
step program gets students into programming very quickly (quicker
than most books). The PrintForm control is included to allow students to
easily submit screen captures of the form at run time. The chapter
introduces the OOP concepts of objects, properties, methods, and events.
The elements of debugging and using the Help system are also
introduced.
Chapter 2, “User Interface Design,” demonstrates techniques for
good program design, including making the interface easy for users as
well as guidelines for designing maintainable programs. Several controls
are introduced, including text boxes, rich text boxes, masked text boxes,
group boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, picture boxes, and the new
Shape and Line controls.
Chapter 3, “Variables, Constants, and Calculations,” presents the
concepts of using data and declaring the data type. Students learn to
follow standards to indicate the data type and scope of variables and
constants and always to use Option Strict, which forces adherence to
strong data typing.
Error handling is accomplished using structured exception handling.
The Try/Catch/Finally structure is introduced in this chapter along
with calculations. The student learns to display error messages using the
MessageBox class and also learns about the OOP concept of overloaded
constructors.
Chapter 4, “Decisions and Conditions,” introduces taking alternate
actions based on conditions formed with the relational and logical
operators. This chapter uses the If statement to validate input data.
Multiple decisions are handled with both nested If statements and the
Select Case structure.
The debugging features of the IDE are covered, including a step-bystep
exercise that covers stepping through program statements and
checking intermediate values during execution.
Chapter 5, “Menus, Common Dialog Boxes, Sub Procedures,
and Function Procedures,” covers the concepts of writing and calling
general sub procedures and function procedures. Students learn to
include both menus and context menus in projects, display the Windows
common dialog boxes, and use the input provided by the user.
Chapter 6, “Multiform Projects,” adds splash forms and About forms
to a project. Summary data are presented on a separate form. The Friend
keyword is introduced.
Chapter 7, “Lists, Loops, and Printing,” incorporates list boxes and
combo boxes into projects, providing the opportunity to discuss looping
procedures and printing lists of information. Printing is accomplished
in .NET using a graphics object and a callback event. The printing
controls also include a Print Preview, which allows students and
instructors to view output without actually printing it.
Chapter 8, “Arrays,” introduces arrays, which follow logically from
the lists covered in Chapter 7. Students learn to use single- and
multidimension arrays, table lookups, and arrays of structures.
Chapter 9, “Web Applications,” introduces Web applications using
VB Web Forms. Students learn to design and develop simple Web
applications that consist of Web pages that execute in a browser
application. Multiple-page Web sites are covered along with validator
controls and an introduction to state management.
Chapter 10, “Database Applications,” introduces ADO.NET, which
is Microsoft’s latest technology for accessing data in a database. This
chapter shows how to create binding sources, table adapters, and
datasets. Programs include accessing data from both Windows Forms and
Web Forms. Students learn to bind data tables to a data grid and bind
individual data fields to controls such as labels and text boxes. LINQ is
used to query system processes.
Chapter 11, “Data Files,” presents the VB object-oriented
techniques for data file handling. Students learn to save and read small
amounts of data using the My object and using streams. The StreamWriter
and StreamReader objects are used to store and reload the contents of a
combo box.
Chapter 12, “OOP: Creating Object-Oriented Programs,”
explains more of the theory of object-oriented programming. Although we
have been using OOP concepts since Chapter 1, in this chapter students
learn the terminology and application of OOP. Inheritance is covered for
visual objects (forms) and for extending existing classes. The samples are
kept simple enough for an introductory class.
Chapter 13, “Graphics, Animation, Sound, and Drag-and-
Drop,” covers the classes and methods of GDI+. The chapter covers
graphics objects, pens, and brushes for drawing shapes and lines.
Animation is accomplished using the Timer control and the SetBounds
method for moving controls. My.Computer.Audio.Play is used to provide
sound, and drag-and-drop events are used to transfer the contents of a
text box to a list box and to move images.
Chapter 14, “Additional Topics in Visual Basic,” introduces some
advanced VB topics. This final chapter covers validating user input using
Error Providers and the Validating event of controls. Students learn to
create applications using multiple document interfaces (MDI), create
toolbars and status bars using ToolStrip and StatusStrip controls, and add
Web content to a Windows Form using the WebBrowser control. The code
snippet feature is introduced. Reading and writing XML text files is
covered using the new XML literals and using LINQ.
An introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) includes
using WPF interoperability with a standard Windows Form and creating a
WPF Form project.
The Appendices offer important additional material. Appendix A holds
the answers to all Feedback questions. Appendix B covers methods and
functions for math, string handling, and date manipulation. In OOP style,
most actions that were formerly done with functions are now accomplished
with methods of the Math class and String class.
Appendix C, on mastering the Visual Studio environment, is based on
the .NET IDE and includes instructions for using snap lines for form
design. Appendix D discusses security issues for both Windows and Web
programming.
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