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CHAPTER 1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010
The start page looks similar regardless of which version of Visual Studio 2010 you are running.
Conceptually, it provides a generic starting point either to select the application you intend to work on, to
quickly receive vital news related to offers, as shown in the fi gure, or to connect with external resources via
the community links.
Once here, the next step is to create your fi rst project. Selecting File
➪ New Project opens the New Project
dialog, shown in Figure 1 - 2. This dialog provides a selection of templates customized by application type.
One option is to create a Class Library project. Such a project doesn ’ t include a user interface; and instead
of creating an assembly with an .exe fi le, it creates an assembly with a .dll fi le. The difference, of course,
is that an .exe fi le indicates an executable that can be started by the operating system, whereas a .dll fi le
represents a library referenced by an application.
FIGURE 1 - 2
Figure 1 - 2 includes the capability to target a specifi c .NET version in the drop - down box located above the
list of project types. In Figure 1 - 2 this shows .NET 2.0, and with only six project types below the selection
listed. With .NET 4 selected, as shown in Figure 1 - 3, the number of project types has increased.
Targeting keeps you from attempting to create a project for WPF without recognizing that you also need at
least .NET 3.0 available on the client. Although you can change your target after you create your project,
be very careful when trying to reduce the version number, as the controls to prevent you from selecting
dependencies don ’ t check your existing code base for violations. Changing your targeted framework version
for an existing project is covered in more detail later in this chapter.
One of the ongoing challenges with describing the menu options for Visual Studio
is that the various versions have slight differences in look and feel too numerous to
mention. For example File ➪ New Project in Visual Basic Express becomes File ➪
New ➪ Project in Visual Studio. Thus, your display may vary slightly from what is
shown or described here, although we attempt to showcase signifi cant differences.
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