Datasheet

Visual Studio 2010

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

Versions of Visual Studio

An introduction to key Visual Basic terms

Targeting a runtime environment

Creating a baseline Visual Basic Windows Form

Project templates

Project properties — application, compilation, debug

Setting properties

IntelliSense, code expansion, and code snippets

Debugging

Recording and using macros

The Class Designer

Team Foundation Server — Team Explorer

You can work with Visual Basic without Visual Studio. In fact, Appendix A focuses on using the

Visual Basic compiler from the command line. In practice, however, most Visual Basic developers

treat the two as almost inseparable; without a version of Visual Studio, you ’ re forced to work

from the command line to create project ﬁ les by hand, to make calls to the associated compilers,

and to manually address the tools necessary to build your application. While Visual Basic supports

this at the same level as C#, F#, C++ and other .NET languages, this isn ’ t the typical focus of a

Visual Basic professional.

Visual Basic ’ s success rose from its increased productivity in comparison to other languages when

building business applications. Visual Studio 2010 increases your productivity and provides assistance

in debugging your applications and is the natural tool for Visual Basic developers.

Accordingly, the current edition of this book is going to start off by introducing you to Visual Studio

2010 and how to build and manage Visual Basic applications. The focus of this chapter is on ensuring

that everyone has a core set of knowledge related to tasks like creating and debugging applications in

Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio 2010 will be used throughout the book for building solutions. Note

while this is the start, don ’ t think of it as an ‘ intro ’ chapter. This chapter will intro key elements of

working with Visual Studio, but will also go beyond that. You may ﬁ nd yourself referencing back to

➤

CH001.indd 3CH001.indd 3 4/5/10 11:56:08 AM4/5/10 11:56:08 AM