Providing programmers and developers of all skill levels with a comprehensive tutorial and reference to Visual Basic (VB) 2008, Microsoft MVP Rod Stephenspresents a broad, solid understanding of essential topics on the latest version of VB. He explains the forms, controls, and other objects that VB furnishes for building applications in a modern windows environment. Plus, he examines the powerful development environment that makes VB such a productive language, and he delves into the VB language itself to show you how to use it to perform an array of important development tasks.

New examples and extensively revised and retested code that complies with the 2008 release help you obtain a firm understanding of VB 2008. Extensive appendixes prove to be particularly useful to help you translate from the languages you already know into the corresponding VB syntax. Ultimately, you'll find coverage of the technologies you need in order to build sophisticated applications with VB 2008.

What you will learn from this book

• Extension methods for adding new features to existing classes

• How to select and use Windows Forms Controls for a specific purpose

• Tips for using subroutines and functions to break a program into manageable pieces

• Techniques for error handling and debugging

• Various important classes and objects to use when building an application

• How to use the graphics device interface routines to draw images in VB

• Ways an application interacts with its environment

Who this book is for
This book is for programmers who are looking to explore the latest features of the new release of Visual Basic. No prior experience with earlier versions of Visual Basic is necessary.

Wrox Professional guides are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations.  They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

About the Author

Rod Stephens started out as a mathematician, but while studying at MIT, discovered the joys of programming and has been programming professionally ever since. During his career, he has worked on an eclectic assortment of applications in such fields as telephone switching, billing, repair dispatching, tax processing, wastewater treatment, concert ticket sales, cartography, and training for professional football players.
Rod is a Microsoft Visual Basic Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and ITT adjunct instructor. He has written 18 books that have been translated into half a dozen different languages, and more than 200 magazine articles covering Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, Delphi, and Java. He is currently a regular contributor to DevX ( www.DevX.com ).
Rod ’ s popular VB Helper web site www.vb-helper.com receives several million hits per month and contains thousands of pages of tips, tricks, and example code for Visual Basic programmers, as well as example code for this book.