Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step by Step (Step by Step (Microsoft))

What is Visual Basic 2005?

Visual Basic 2005 is a development tool that you can use to build applications that perform useful work and look great within a variety of settings. Using Visual Basic 2005, you can create applications for the Windows operating system, the Web, hand-held devices, and a host of other environments and settings. The most important advantage of Visual Basic is that it has been designed to increase productivity in your daily development work—especially if you need to use information in databases or create solutions for the Internet—but an important additional benefit is that once you become comfortable with the development environment in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, you can use the same tools to write programs for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005, Microsoft Visual C# 2005, Microsoft Visual J# 2005, and other third-party tools and compilers.

Visual Basic .NET Versions

The first version of Visual Basic .NET (Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2002) was released in February 2002. The second release (Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003) was widely available in March 2003. After a long period of development and integration work, Microsoft released Visual Basic 2005 in late 2005. Visual Basic 2005 is now so tightly integrated with Visual Studio that it is only available as a component in the Visual Studio 2005 programming suite, which includes the Visual C#, Visual C++, and Visual J# compilers and other Microsoft .NET development tools. However, Visual Studio 2005 is sold in several different product configurations, including Standard Edition, Professional Edition, Team Suite, and Express Edition. I've written this book to be compatible with all editions of Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, but especially with the tools and techniques available in Visual Studio Standard Edition and Visual Studio Professional Edition. Although Visual Basic 2005 is similar in many ways to Visual Basic .NET 2003, there are many important differences and improvements, so I recommend that you complete the exercises in this book using the Visual Basic 2005 software.

NOTE

The Visual Basic 2005 software is not included with this book! The CD-ROM distributed with most versions of this book contains practice files, sample databases, and other useful information that requires the Visual Basic 2005 software (sold separately) for use.