Teach yourself the fundamentals of working with Visual Basic 2008 one step at a time. With STEP BY STEP, you work at your own pace through hands-on, learn-by-doing exercises. Whether you re a beginning programmer or new to this specific language, you ll understand the core capabilities and fundamental techniques for Visual Basic 2008 and rapidly build robust, elegant applications. Each chapter puts you to work, showing you how, when, and why to use the latest features of Visual Basic guiding you each step of the way as you create actual components and working applications for Windows. You ll also explore data management and Web-based development topics. PLUS get practice files with sample code and data sets on the companion CD.

This book introduces Visual Basic from an object-oriented viewpoint, with a rigor and accessibility perfect for students learning their first programming language. Rich in the pedagogical style that is the trademark of the Dale series of programming texts, this Visual Basic text provides straightforward explanations, meaningful examples, and engaging exercises. Students develop good programming habits right from the start and acquire a thorough understanding of classes, methods, object-oriented concepts, and algorithms. The Visual Basic Graphical User Interface (GUI) is extensively discussed, which complements the text's emphasis on fundamental programming concepts. The active learning methodology and rich topic coverage of this text thoroughly prepare students for future study.

The focus of this book is on the fundamentals of programming. Each chapter focuses on one of the major programming constructs of the language. User interface details, while not ignored, are kept to the basics of form design in Visual Basic .NET. I wrote this book feeling that once the reader has a good grasp of using Visual Basic .NET, the reader can venture out on his or her own to learn more about user interface design and development.