Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Programming for the Absolute Beginner ( No Experience Required )

433 Pages·2009·6.91 MB·English

by  Jr.

Microsoft® Visual Basic®
2008 Express
Programming for the
Absolute Beginner
Jerry Lee Ford, Jr.
Course Technology PTR
A part of Cengage Learning
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Microsoft® Visual Basic® 2008 Express © 2009 Course Technology, a part of Cengage Learning.
Programming for the Absolute
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Beginner: Jerry Lee Ford, Jr.
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To my mother and father for always being there, and to my
wonderful children, Alexander, William, and Molly, and my
beautiful wife, Mary.
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book represents the combined efforts of many individuals to whom I
owe many thanks. For starters, there is Mitzi Koontz, for helping me get
this book started and for her support as acquisitions editor. I also owe an
extra debt of gratitude to Jenny Davidson, for serving as the book’s project editor
and for working hard to make sure that in the end everything came together like
it was supposed to. I also need to thank Keith Davenport, who served as technical
editor for this book. Finally, I’d like to thank everyone else at Course Technology
PTR for all their contributions and hard work.
A A
BOUT THE UTHOR
J
erry Lee Ford, Jr. is an author, educator, and an IT professional with over
20 years of experience in information technology, including roles as an
automation analyst, technical manager, technical support analyst, au-
tomation engineer, and security analyst. He is the author of 31 books and co-author
of two additional books. His published works include Windows PowerShell 2.0
Programming for the Absolute Beginner, AJAX Programming for the Absolute Beginner,
Scratch Programming for Teens, Microsoft WSH & VBScript Programming for the Absolute
Beginner, DarkBASIC Programming for the Absolute Beginner, and Microsoft Windows XP
Professional Administrator’s Guide. Jerry has a master’s degree in business adminis-
tration from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and he
has over five years of experience as an adjunct instructor teaching networking
courses in information technology.
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Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................... xiii
1 An Introduction to Visual Basic 2008 Express..... 1
Project Preview: The Joke Machine.................................................................................... 2
A Few Opening Words........................................................................................................... 3
A Quick Overview of Visual Basic....................................................................................... 3
GUI Development.......................................................................................................... 4
Rapid Application Development............................................................................... 5
Object-Oriented Programming.................................................................................. 5
Introducing Visual Basic 2008 Express............................................................................. 5
What Can Visual Basic 2008 Express Do?................................................................ 7
What Can’t Visual Basic 2008 Express Do?............................................................. 7
What’s New in Visual Basic 2008 Express........................................................................ 8
Support for Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5..................................................... 9
Multi-Targeting.............................................................................................................. 9
More IntelliSense........................................................................................................... 9
Support for New WPF and WCF............................................................................... 10
New Language Features............................................................................................. 10
Improved ClickOnce Deployment........................................................................... 11
Integrated Power Pack Controls.............................................................................. 11
Other Visual Studio 2008 Express Programming Languages................................... 12
Visual C# 2008 Express.............................................................................................. 12
Visual C++ 2008 Express............................................................................................. 13
The Microsoft .NET Framework........................................................................................ 13
Before .NET.................................................................................................................... 14
.NET Components........................................................................................................ 14
.NET 2.0........................................................................................................................... 15
Back to the Joke Machine................................................................................................... 18
Designing the Game................................................................................................... 18
Summary................................................................................................................................ 26
viii Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Programming for the Absolute Beginner
2 Navigating the Visual Basic 2008 Express
Development Environment.................................... 29
Project Preview: The Click Race Game........................................................................... 30
Getting Comfortable Moving Around the Visual Basic 2008 Express IDE............ 32
Navigating the IDE Menu.......................................................................................... 34
Working with Toolbars.............................................................................................. 35
Form Designer Basics................................................................................................. 35
Understanding the Code Editor.............................................................................. 37
What’s in the Toolbox?.............................................................................................. 45
Working with Solution Explorer............................................................................. 46
Understanding How to Use the Properties Window.......................................... 47
The Component Tray.................................................................................................. 49
Other Windows............................................................................................................ 50
IDE Components Specific to WPF Applications........................................................... 51
Back to the Click Race Game............................................................................................. 54
Designing the Game................................................................................................... 54
Summary................................................................................................................................ 62
3 Creating an Application Interface...................... 65
Project Preview: The Speed Typing Game...................................................................... 66
Putting Together a Graphical User Interface............................................................... 68
GUI Design for Windows Forms Applications.............................................................. 68
Specifying a Windows Starting Position............................................................... 68
Specifying Windows Border Style........................................................................... 69
Dynamically Altering Title Bar Messages.............................................................. 70
Setting Up Control Tab Order and Focus.............................................................. 72
Adding a Status Bar to Your Application.............................................................. 73
Posting a Notify Icon in the System Tray.............................................................. 78
Adding a Splash Screen to Your Application....................................................... 79
Leveraging the Convenience of Built-in Dialogs................................................. 81
Windows Forms Versus WPF Applications.................................................................... 89
GUI Design for WPF Applications.................................................................................... 90
Creating Console Applications Using Text-Based Interfaces.................................... 95
ClickOnce Application Deployment............................................................................... 97
Back to the Speed Typing Game....................................................................................... 99
Designing the Game................................................................................................... 99
Summary.............................................................................................................................. 111
4 Working with Menus and Toolbars..................... 113
Project Preview: The Lottery Assistant Game............................................................. 114
Designing a Menu System............................................................................................... 117
Contents ix
Adding Menus, Menu Items, and Submenus............................................................. 119
Associating Code Statements with Menus and Menu Items......................... 123
Enhancing Windows Menus................................................................................... 123
Enabling and Disabling Menus and Menu Items.............................................. 128
Hiding and Displaying Menus and Menu Items............................................... 130
Context Menus................................................................................................................... 131
Adding Convenience with Toolbars.............................................................................. 134
Adding Graphics to Your Toolbars........................................................................ 136
Associating Program Statements with Toolbar Buttons................................. 137
Back to the Lottery Assistant Game.............................................................................. 139
Designing the Game................................................................................................. 140
Summary.............................................................................................................................. 155
5 Storing and Retrieving Data in Memory............ 157
Project Preview: The Story of Mighty Molly................................................................ 157
Enhancing Your Code with Comments....................................................................... 160
Storing and Retrieving Data........................................................................................... 161
Alternative Ways of Storing Data......................................................................... 161
Data Types................................................................................................................... 162
Working with Constants................................................................................................. 163
Declaring Your Own Constants............................................................................. 164
Using Visual Basic Built-in Constants.................................................................. 165
Working with Variables................................................................................................... 167
Defining Variables..................................................................................................... 167
Assigning Data to Variables.................................................................................... 168
Rules for Naming Variables.................................................................................... 171
Recognizing Variables as Objects.......................................................................... 172
Variable Conversion.................................................................................................. 173
Functions and Methods for Manipulating Strings........................................... 176
Working with Arrays........................................................................................................ 178
Defining Arrays.......................................................................................................... 178
Loading Array Elements.......................................................................................... 178
Retrieving Array Elements...................................................................................... 179
Resizing Arrays........................................................................................................... 180
Erasing Arrays............................................................................................................ 180
Working with Structures................................................................................................. 181
Reserved Words.................................................................................................................. 182
Back to the Story of Mighty Molly................................................................................. 183
Designing the Game................................................................................................. 183
Summary.............................................................................................................................. 196