Wiley Wrox's Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition Starter Kit
Contents
1. as performance monitors and hardware devices Moving over to the other side of the main window you ll find two more essential windows the Solution Explorer and the Properties window both of which are shown in Figure 1 4 Solution Explorer A X Properties x E E 2 z Fe Button1 System Windows Forms Button X l WindowsApplication1 az AJ ELZ My Project EE Formi vb BackgroundImageLayou Tile Cursor Default FlatAppearance FlatStyle Standard Font Microsoft Sans Serif 8 ForeColor HB controltext Image CJ none ImageAlign MiddleCenter ImageIndex C none ImageKey C none ImageList none RightToLeft No Text Button1 yl Solution Explorer 4 Data Sources Tack Alin MiddlaCankaw ha Figure 1 4 Q The Solution Explorer provides you with a way to navigate through your program s structure with entries for each form module and class along with supporting files such as the applica tion configuration file The view is structured in a way similar to Windows Explorer so you should have no problem navigating your way through the program Q The Properties window gives you access to the various configurable options available to the currently selected item This can be a form a server component or an individual object such as the Button object shown in Figure 1 4 By default the Properties window is organized into cate gories but you can click the A Z button to sort the properties alph2. box when the user clicked it That Was Too Easy Yes I know that first program seemed a little too easy didn t it That you needed to write only one line of code to actually create a program containing a button on a form that produces a message might seem a little crazy but that s what Visual Basic Express is all about making life as a programmer incredibly simple 12 Basic Installation To show you that this simplicity extends well beyond the age old Hello World program I can show you how to create a simple web browser The intention is to create a form that has a button a text input area and a fully functional web browser on it When the user clicks the button the web browser will attempt to navigate to the URL entered in the text area Try It Out Your Very Own Web Browser 1 2 Start a new Windows Application project in the same way you did in the previous Try It Out exercise Once the blank form is generated you need to add a Button control along with a TextBox con trol and a WebBrowser Because you want to be able to see what s on the web page resize the form to 500 pixels wide by 460 pixels high To do this you can select the form in the design win dow and click and drag the bottom right corner to the desired size or you can locate the Size values in the Properties window You ll learn more about properties in more detail in subse quent chapters but for now overwrite the current setting with the val
3. click on the word Button in the Toolbox window and the Visual Basic Express IDE will automatically place a button on the form in a default location and with default settings After you ve done all this the IDE should look like Figure 1 3 Basic Installation fey WindowsApplicationt Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition File Edt View Project Build Debug Data Format Tools Window Community Help ES Fi ed Ga la alak A be HATARA Toolbox vax Form1 vb Design Start Page Sees pleas ets wih Es 2 All Windows Forms e _ aj 92 1 2 Common Controls oe L WindowsApplication1 R Pointer Saj My Project ab Button E Formi vb v CheckBox ES CheckedListBox EF ComboBox T DateTimePicker A Label 2a ListView MaskedTextBox T MorthCalendar Sm NotifyIcon EY Solution Ex 4 Data Sources EZ NumericUpDown baa PictureBox n Properties x ProgressBar Buttoni System Windows Forms But RadioButton oza alg 85 RichTextBox Flatstyle Standard abl TextBox E Font Microsoft Sans Se R ToolTip ForeColor E Cocttroltext SE Treeview Image L none Tmagedlign MiddleCenter ImageIndex __ none Er WebBrowser Containers Imagekey E none R Porter Imagelist none om FlowLayoutPanel RightToLeft No GroupBox Text Button E Panel TextAlign MiddleCenter m D Spltcorkainer Text TabControl The text
4. way of associating code with user interface elements is identical to previous ver sions For people with previous experience in Visual Basic programming the only real hurdle is learning how to handle the new way of actually coding proper object oriented programming is admittedly dif ferent from the way VB6 did it So here we are with a programming language that has evolved over more than 40 years and through many iterations and somehow has maintained a freshness with each release that has kept programmers faithful to it over all that time It is a language that possesses an incredibly robust and intuitive framework of objects and programming constructs that ease you as a programmer into creating full blown applica tions almost without thought and an environment that can produce applications that rival the profession ally built solutions on the market in performance and user interface Visual Basic 2005 Express want to use it Thought so Chapter 1 Let s Get Started Obviously before you do anything else you re going to need to install Visual Basic Express on your computer Microsoft has fine tuned this process over the years and you ll find the steps to be as easy as 1 2 3 When you go through the Visual Basic 2005 Express Setup wizard you need to select only a couple of options before the setup process takes over and does the rest for you After you read and accept the license agreement the installation program will exa
5. Basic Installation Ever wondered where Basic came from Much maligned but still the most popular programming language in the world the Basic language has enjoyed a colorful past and many evolutions to get where it is today In this chapter you ll discover the origins of this powerful programming lan guage You ll install Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition along with the supporting applications and frameworks you ll need to write programs effectively And finally yes you will indeed write your first program By the time you hit the end of this chapter you ll be familiar with how Visual Basic is put together and be ready to create programming projects that will form the basis for all of your solutions from here on out In this chapter you learn about the following Q The history of Visual Basic as a language QO Installing Visual Basic Express and its dependencies Q Creating your first program Where Did Basic Come From If you tell friends or work colleagues who are experienced in programming that you re going to learn Visual Basic there is a good chance that they ll look at you with a question in their eyes That questioning glare is usually an indicator that they re in what I call the other half of the program ming world This is the group of programmers who still believe that Basic is not a real program ming language and should be reserved for people who don t know how to write a real program If this happen
6. MT Get ready For the newest version of NGen Don t Freak Out About Visual Studio Fri 11 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Betsy Aoki helps first time programmers and Yisual Basic Newbies get accustomed to the concepts and the environment provided by Visual Studio NE i Generating Documentation for Your Visual Basic NET Applications Fri 11 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Learn how to use a free PowerToy to add XML doc support to your Visual Basic NET application and create documertatation as you write code How to Develop Orientation Aware and DPI Aware Applications for Pocket PC Fri 11 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Learn how to convert an existing application to be aware of landscape orientation and screen resolution Visual Basic Developer Database Developer Corner Working with Files and D Mon 07 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Visual Basic Developer s Carl Ganz shows you how to hamess the NET Framework classes to handle data stored in disk files Visual Studio NET Developer Programming Reporting Services with B NET Mon 07 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Learn to program SQL 2000 Reporting Services and build J interactive reporting solutions for SQL Server and other ODBC compliant databases gt a How to Create a Database Browser Application for Pocket PC in Visual Basic b Man N7 Gab INE NANNAN GMT lesen haw he dienlow dats Fram Wah Ganire an m Visual Basic Express Headlines Ready Figure 1 2 To finish setting the scene double
7. Server as it automati cally detects that they are already present on your system 2 Customizing the Browser Application Extend your web browser program so you can both go back to the previous web page you visited and navigate to the default home page of Internet Explorer You ll need to use two more methods of the WebBrowser control GoHome and GoBack 15
8. abetically instead The last major areas to cover are the Error List and Task List windows at the bottom of the IDE These two windows will not appear until you have compiled or run an application but after that point they will always be present by default Q The Error List will be populated with any potential issues with the code and form design of your application The issues will be broken down into three categories errors that will stop the program from compiling at all warnings that indicate a probable runtime error that ought to be investigated before running your program and informational messages that are purely there for your reference and won t affect the way the program runs Q The Task List contains automatically generated tasks although you can also manually create your own user tasks You can use this list to keep an eye on what needs to be done and you can check individual tasks off as you complete them 10 Basic Installation Your First Program You re actually well on the way to creating your first program in Visual Basic 2005 Express Earlier in the chapter you created a Windows Application that generated a blank form On the form you added a but ton To finish the job you ll need to write a single line of code that will be executed when a user clicks on the button The following Try It Out walks you through the entire process of creating the project adding the button to the form and writing your first lin
9. any ported Basic to various other computing platforms and by the end of that decade most computers had some form of the Basic language It was from this starting point that both its ease of use and popularity as well as the disparaging opinions of many hardcore programmers sprang When DOS was first released for the early PCs versions of a Basic interpreter were distributed along with the operating system Programming code can be executed in two ways interpreted or compiled Q When it is compiled it is assembled into the underlying machine code and can execute fast However the compilation can take a while and the program will not execute at all if even one error is present Q An interpreter on the other hand requires another program to run through the code one line at a time and execute it piece by piece While this is slower than compiled code it doesn t require a compilation routine before running and it can execute working code up to the point where an error occurs Basic and Visual Basic in particular requires some form of a runtime component because of the interpretive nature of the language compilers Microsoft took the command line interpreter to the next step and introduced QuickBasic QuickBasic did actually compile the code into an executable but it was still slow in comparison to the professional lan guages on the market In the late 1980s and early 1990s Alan Cooper created a prototype that enabled a developer to d
10. book Basic Installation The only exception would be if you already have SQL Server installed on your system In that case you could use the existing installation for any database server examples instead although I cannot guarantee they will work as expected if you are using an older version of SQL Server The only other decision that you have to make is to where to install the application Note that you don t actually get to choose the location of the optional components or the underlying NET Framework In addition this location does not affect the location of the projects you will create you ll set that location later in this chapter Once you ve made that decision click Next to start the actual file copy and registra tion process As the installer copies each component over to your computer it will mark the status on an interim screen The obvious icons will point out any errors but most likely you ll encounter nothing but success In the event of an error the installation process will advise you as to what steps to take to rectify it before you try again Fortunately for you the rest of the installation is automatic and while it can take quite some time you can sit back and have a coffee and perhaps a Danish while you wait When you re presented with the final screen you have the capability to submit to Microsoft a copy of the installation log so they can check it against what they expect While many people believe s
11. contained in the control oo TableLayoutPane bo Ready Figure 1 3 The Major Components Now that the main components of the IDE are visible and you have even used some it s time to tell you what each section does You should already be familiar with menus and toolbars they re present in almost every current application The thing to be aware of in Visual Basic Express is that they re dynamic and show only the commands that are appropriate to the current context For example the Format menu will disappear when you re in a code window as it doesn t make sense for it to be present when you re writing code Similarly the Text Window toolbar won t show when you re designing a form layout The next major window is the Toolbox In the next several chapters you ll use the Toolbox to add various components to your applications which should give you an idea of what each one does Every funda mental component you can add to your solution can be found in the Toolbox To add one to your form layout you can double click on it or click and drag it to the form Chapter 1 The objects are grouped into logical sections based on function By default you ll find the Windows Forms section is expanded and contains many commonly used elements such as buttons and text areas The other readily available groups deal with data related components such as database connections and system components that give you access to system level features such
12. e of code Try It Out Creating Your First Program If you didn t create the project in the previous part of this chapter follow these steps 1 Start Visual Basic 2005 Express As mentioned previously you ll find the link to Visual Basic in your main All Programs list on the Start menu 2 Create a new Visual Basic project by selecting File gt New Project This will present you with the New Project window listing all available project templates see Figure 1 5 New Project wt Templates Visual Studio installed templates Windows Class Library Console My Movie Screen Saver Application Application Collecti Starter Kit My Templates Search Online Templates A project For creating an application with a Windows user interface Name WindowsApplication1 Cancel __ Figure 1 5 By default Windows Application should be selected This will create a normal program that runs in Windows Click OK when you re ready to have the project generated for you 3 After a moment you will be presented with a blank form in the center of the IDE Find the Button control in the Toolbox and double click it to automatically add it to the form in the top left corner 4 Select the Button object that was added to the form by clicking it once Locate the Text prop erty in the Properties window it may be easier if you sort it alphabetically and change it to Say Hello To do this you should click the right hand column nex
13. etter describe the environment and to start setting it up in a way that will be useful to following the examples in this book move your mouse over the Toolbox tab on the left and when the IDE automati cally expands it click the pin button to keep it from automatically hiding Next create a basic project by clicking on the File menu selecting New Project and clicking OK when the New Project dialog window is shown This will create an empty form and show it in Design view Start Page Microsoft Visual Basi Express Edition Ps A F 2 T g Recent Projects How Dol What s new in Visual Basic 2005 Create Your First Application Use 4 Starter Kit Learn Visual Basic Connect With the Communky Download Additional Content MSDN Visual Basic Attend Mobile Embedded DevCon 2005 May 9 12 Wed 23 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Learn how to buld and bring to market devices applications content and services for Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded platforms at the premier developer event WSE 2 0 Give Your Web Services Consumers the Exact XML They Need to Suc Mon 14 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Chris Dix shows you how to tackle XML serialization so that your service emits the XML that other Web services are expecting Advanced Basics Doing Async the Easy Way Mon 14 Feb 2005 08 00 00 GMT Doing Async the Easy Way Speed NGen Revs Up Your Performance with Powerful New Features Mon 14 Feb 2005 08 00 00 G
14. extBox control to get the URL text and the Navigate method of the WebBrowser control to tell it to go to the URL This is all achieved with the following line of code Private Sub Buttonl_Click ByVal sender As System Object _ ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles Button1l Click WebBrowser1 Navigate TextBox1 Text End Sub 6 Run the program by pressing F5 or selecting the Start command on the Debug menu When the form is displayed type a URL in the text area such as http www wrox com and then click the Go button After a moment the web browser area of the form will be populated with the web page associated with the URL as shown in Figure 1 8 a5 Form1 Sax http www wrox com BROWSE BOOKS P2P COMMUNITY Find Wrox Books Browse by Topic All Books Macromedia Open Source Cc Visual Basic and VBA Database Web Dotnet XML Java Figure 1 8 As you can see creating what appears to be a fairly complex program is made simple in Visual Basic 2005 Express The controls used to create this program along with the techniques known as method and wrox aael ELLE oH cole LEs Ut dii FREE NEWSLETTER Featured Wrox Titles Beginning Jav Java programr Sy my developers thr fundamentals and directives Language JSF and testing an JavaServer Pages More Info Beginning PHF Web Developn gt property access in code are discussed in the next few chapters 14 Ba
15. mine your system and present you with a list of two optional products see Figure 1 1 Fa Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition Setup Installation Options m Diy r BASIC 2005 Express Su Member of the Visual Studio Family Select the optional product s you would like to install v Microsoft MSDN Express Library 2005 The MSDN Express Library contains additional product documentation for all Visual Studio Express Editions You can choose to install MSDN Express Library at a later time See the Readme for more information v Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SQL Server Express is a basic version of Microsoft SQL Server that allows you to easily read write and deploy application data V For more information see the Readme file lt Previous Next gt Cancel Figure 1 1 As far as I m concerned both of the optional components are essential Q The MSDN Express Library includes the documentation for both the NET Framework and Visual Basic 2005 Express If you do not include this in the installation you will have only very rudimentary help available to you without going to the Internet Q The second option includes SQL Server 2005 Express Edition in the installation process so that you can develop full blown database based applications And if you re still not convinced you will need it to be installed if you want to complete all of the exercises and tasks set out in this
16. s to you just look at them and smile For while Basic has indeed had a rocky history the last couple of versions of Visual Basic rival the best alternatives in development and with Visual Basic 2005 Express s extra features that make it even easier to create full blown solutions not only will your programs be able to achieve the same results as the best professional coder but you will also be able to do it in less time much less time Chapter 1 However to be fair this section provides a quick rundown of where Visual Basic Express came from just so you know how far it has come You ll learn that Visual Basic has a rich past that has helped it evolve into a solid respected language that often leaves the more recent programming languages scrambling for a foundation on which they can be compared against it The Basic programming language was first created back in 1964 more than 40 years ago Its very inception was meant to make programming easy and more accessible In fact the name was actually originally an acronym that stood for Beginner s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code It was designed as an interim step for students when they were learning programming concepts for more complex lan guages such as Fortran In the 1970s Bill Gates and Paul Allen got involved and worked with the company MITS Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems to develop a version of Basic for the Altair PC From that humble beginning Gates and comp
17. sic Installation Summary Creating programs using Visual Basic 2005 Express is an immensely rewarding process When you need to write only a couple of lines of code to achieve a feature rich solution it frees you to think of more complex solutions and helps you harness the power of Windows in ways that previously would be too difficult to contemplate In this chapter you learned to do the following Install Visual Basic Express SQL Server Express and the associated documentation Create a simple application that says Hello World and another that can browse a website In the next chapter you ll find out about starter kits and wizards more features of Visual Basic Express that make your programming life easier Along with these wizards you ll learn about some core pro gramming concepts such as controls classes methods and properties that are essential to programming in any language Exercises 1 Installing Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition To create applications that run on the Internet you can still use Visual Basic 2005 as a language but you will need to install Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition The method for installing Web Developer Express is exactly the same as what has been outlined here but it will install Web Developer instead of Visual Basic If you have already installed Visual Basic Express you ll find that the Web Developer installation process does not include options for MSDN or SQL
18. t to Text to access the value by default it says Button1 which is the name of the control 11 Chapter 1 5 Double click the button on the form and the IDE will automatically open the code window for this form It will then create the necessary code to execute your code when the button is clicked like so Private Sub Buttonl_Click ByVal sender As System Object _ ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles Button1l Click End Sub 6 In between the Private Sub and End Sub lines write the code MessageBox Show Hello World so that the program appears like this Private Sub Buttonl_Click ByVal sender As System Object _ ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles Button1l Click MessageBox Show Hello World End Sub T Now you can run your program The easiest way is to simply press the F5 button but if you find the menus and toolbars easier to use you ll find the Start command in the Debug menu Either way when you run your program you ll be presented with a simple form with a single button on it If you click the button it will display a message box with the words Hello World as shown in Figure 1 6 Congratulations you ve written your first complete Visual Basic Express program ae Form Hello World Figure 1 6 What you ve done is create a Windows Application a program designed to run on Windows with a base form You then added a button to it and wrote actual code to generate a message dialog
19. tion of object oriented programming that hurt its reputation in the performance and pure programming stakes That all changed with NET Visual Basic NET was the first fully compiled language and required no extra runtime component other than the one required by all other NET languages the NET Common Language Runtime CLR Visual Basic NET programs compile down to the same assembled code that the other NET languages do and because of this Visual Basic has no performance issues in comparison to C or C In the last few paragraphs several programming terms have been used that you may not be familiar with If you are new to programming then the next few chapters will be extremely useful to you particularly the information in Chapter 2 that explains the most commonly used object oriented programming terms that you ll encounter in Visual Basic Express The Old and the New The beauty of this latest move for Basic is that it has not lost the ease of use and additional features that make it the choice of many programmers wizards intuitive user interface design and some excellent debugging features although edit and continue was removed in the early days of NET it lives again in Visual Basic 2005 Express In fact the modern development environment for NET has more in common with the way Visual Basic 6 worked than the C equivalent The toolbox Solution Explorer and properties pages are almost unchanged and the
20. ubmitting this information is either pointless or a way for Microsoft to gain access to private data Microsoft does actually find the information useful in fine tuning its processes and anything that improves the speed and efficiency of an installation process is something I am 100 percent behind What It Looks Like Once you have successfully installed Visual Basic 2005 Express you can start it up by selecting it from your Start menu Click Start gt All Programs Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition After the obligatory splash screen identifying the application and version you ll be presented with an interface much like the one shown in Figure 1 2 The main program is known as an Integrated Development Environment or IDE for short The IDE of Visual Basic Express has been formed from the experiences of many programmers and many other envi ronments but it will definitely be familiar to anyone who has programmed in Visual Basic before To explore the main elements you should expand and pin several windows and explorers As you can see in Figure 1 2 to the right of the Welcome page is an area entitled Solution Explorer In the top right corner of this area are three small buttons The middle one is the pin or auto hide button When clicked this tells the IDE to always show the area or to automatically hide it when it is not needed Another win dow that is currently hidden is the toolbox to the left of the Welcome page Chapter 1 To b
21. ue 500 460 Once the form size is set click and drag the three controls from the Toolbox onto the form and then resize them again using either the click and drag method or setting the values directly in the Properties window so they are laid out as shown in Figure 1 7 You should also set the Text property of the button control to the word Go You ll notice that as you click and drag controls to move them about or to resize them small helper lines appear These lines indicate ideal proximity to the edges of the form or to other con trols In some cases you ll also see small blue alignment lines that make aligning controls with each other easy a Form Sieg Figure 1 7 13 Chapter 1 4 Now that you re done with design all you need to do is add the code to make the button react when clicked Just as you did in the previous Try It Out double click on the button to generate the code necessary to hook into the click of the button 5 The only thing you need to do in the code is tell the WebBrowser control to go to the URL speci fied in the TextBox control The properties you see in the Properties window are also accessible in code The way you access these properties is by specifying the name of the control followed by a period and then the name of the property Methods are functions connected to an object and they execute a certain task In this case you need the Text property of the T
22. ynamically add components then called widgets to a program running off a small custom built language engine Microsoft bought the concept and combined it with QuickBasic to form Visual Basic 1 And Then Came Visual Basic Visual Basic was a revolution to Basic programmers worldwide as it enabled them to drag and drop con trols from a toolbox onto their forms without having to write any code at all It also changed the focus of the actual code to an event oriented model that reacted to things happening as opposed to making things happen Visual Basic s versatility enabled third party companies to develop add ins and additional controls that Visual Basic programmers could use in their own applications and the popularity of the language grew hugely Basic Installation Subsequent versions of Visual Basic introduced database support ODBC in VB2 and Jet in VB3 and the ability to create your own add ins and classes in VB4 and ultimately your own controls in VB6 While all of this was happening Basic appeared in other applications such as Access Basic and VBScript for Internet Explorer This integration of Basic as a way of programmatically accessing features in Windows and applications culminated in Visual Basic for Applications which first appeared in Microsoft Office 97 Throughout all these stages of its evolution however Visual Basic was still crippled with additional run time components and a much less than perfect implementa
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