Datasheet

Chapter 1: Introduction to the IDE
5
Visual Studio will also look different depending on which version you have installed. The free Visual
Basic 2008 Express Edition product has fewer tools than other editions such as the high-end Visual Stu-
dio 2008 Team Suite. The figures in this book were captured while using Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite,
so, if you have another version, you may not see all of the tools shown here.
You can learn about Visual Studio’s free Express editions at
msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/
express/default.aspx
. Learn about Visual Basic in general at the Visual Basic home page
msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/default.aspx .
Finally, you may be using different configuration settings from the ones used while writing this book.
You can configure Visual Studio to use settings customized for developing projects using Visual Basic,
C#, Web tools, and other technologies. This book assumes your installation is configured for Visual Basic
development and the screen shots may look different if you have selected a different configuration. The
following section says more about different IDE configurations and tells how you can select a particular
configuration.
IDE Configurations
When you install it, Visual Studio asks you what kind of development settings you want to use. The
most obvious choice for a Visual Basic developer is Visual Basic Development Settings. This choice cus-
tomizes Visual Studio to work more easily with Visual Basic, and is a good choice if you will focus on
Visual Basic development.
Another reasonable choice is General Development Settings. This option makes Visual Studio behave
more like Visual Studio 2003. It’s a good choice if you are used to Visual Studio 2003, or if you expect to
use other Visual Studio languages, such as C#, fairly regularly because these settings are fairly effective
for C# development as well as Visual Basic development.
This book assumes that you have configured Visual Studio for Visual Basic development. If you have
chosen a different configuration, some of the figures in this book may look different from what you see
on your screen. Some of the menu items available may be slightly different, or may appear in a different
order. Usually, the items are available somewhere, but you may have to search a bit to find them.
If you later decide that you want to switch configurations, open the Tools menu and select Import and
Export Settings to display the Import and Export Settings Wizard. Select the Reset all settings option but-
ton and click Next. In the second page, tell the wizard whether to save your current settings and click
Next. On the wizard’s final page (shown in Figure 1-1 ), select the type of configuration you want and
click Finish. When the wizard is done saving the new settings, click Close.
c01.indd 5c01.indd 5 12/18/07 3:54:54 PM12/18/07 3:54:54 PM