Visual Basic .NET Bible (Paperback)

by Bill Evjen (Author), Jason Beres (Author) "Visual Basic .NET is the most exciting upgrading to the Basic language since the GW-Basic upgrade to Visual Basic 1.0..." (more)
Key Phrases: public instance property, public instance method, protected instance method, End Sub, Visual Basic, Public Instance Event (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Contributors Include: Jim Chandler, Jacob Grass, Kevin Grossnicklaus, Uday Kranti, NIIT, Rob Teixeira, and Yancey Jones.

Visual Basic .NET Bible covers everything you need to get up and runningwith this much changed version of Visual Basic and to begin creating applications for the new Microsoft.NET Platform.

From the Back Cover
If Visual Basic .NET can do it, you can do it too … Visual Basic .NET represents the greatest generational leap Visual Basic has ever taken. Written by a talented team of Visual Basic .NET experts, this comprehensive guide helps you flatten the .NET learning curve and get to work, whether you're a Visual Basic 6 veteran, an ASP developer, or a programming newcomer. Starting with an overview of new object-oriented programming features, the authors walk you through Visual Basic language basics and the Visual Studio .NET IDE, explain ADO.NET and XML data access technologies, and demonstrate step by step how to create Windows Forms, ASP.NET applications, and Web Services. Inside, you'll find complete coverage of Visual Basic .NET

• Get a quick rundown of differences between Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET
• Master the ins and outs of the Visual Basic .NET language, from "Hello World" to object-oriented programming, multithreading, and COM interoperability
• Find out how to boost your productivity in the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment
• Harness ADO.NET and XML to access and manipulate data
• Get a handle on creating Windows Forms, from controls to visual inheritance
• Delve into HTML and Web controls, plus learn how to encapsulate code into user controls and find out what's new with security and configuration for your ASP.
  
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Product Details

• Paperback: 1240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (December 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764548263
• ISBN-13: 978-0764548260
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #886,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Misses the Mark, May 2, 2002

By	CodeHead (NV, USA) - See all my reviews

I guess that I am the exception here, since everyone else seems to love this book. I thought that the book was not very well put together. Let me give you some concrete examples:

First, I think that it has already been said that this book does not have enough OOP. That is probably true. I have been doing OOP for so long that I didn't miss the omission, but it might be a little frustrating for a novice.

There are also a lot of little things that I noticed. Much of the book seems to be a reprinting of the .NET SDK documentation. Another thing that bothered me quite a bit is that in their tables that list the methods of classes, they didn't list the return values of the methods. This may seem like a little thing, but it meant that I had to go look everything up in the SDK anyway, so after a while I ditched the book and just used the SDK.

Another thing that I noticed was some incorrect terminology. As an example, Mr. Beres refers to the System.IO.Directory class as a "static" class. I knew what he meant, because I am also a Java programmer, but that terminology is not used in VB.NET. That could be very confusing because there is no such thing as a static class in VB.NET. VB used to support static methods, but static in this sense meant something completely different than what Mr. Beres is trying to express. I believe that he meant that the class consists only of Shared methods, not that it is a static class.

Again, I don't mean to nitpick here, because there were some good things, too. I have also written books for a competing publisher, so I know how hard it is to get everything just right (trust me folks, its not as easy as it looks!), and the authors have done an admirable job. It's just that better attention to detail as well as more consideration of the audience could have made this book so much better.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VB .NET power, January 23, 2002

By	Ladachki (Canada) - See all my reviews

I got this book several days ago. At the first look book is very good. There is a big difference between VB6 and VB .NET and this book will show you more than you will find in any other book written for VB .NET so far. 1240 pages, 50 chapters, source code at companion web site. I have seen MOC 2373 Object Oriented Programming using Visual Basic .NET and some other books. This book will help me (probably you too) to learn new product and hopefully pass future MCSD certification exams.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book but lacks OOP discussion, February 22, 2002

By A Customer

It is really a well written book. The authors are really good programmers. Good treatment is given as for as the GUI and .NET framework is concerened. Surprisingly not much about OOP itself. For example the most important form of inheritance, namely the interface inheritance is not at all discussed! If you read this book along with cornell's apress book (which is excellent for OOP but lacks GUI treatment)then you will get the complete picture.