Simply Visual Basic .NET

About

Features

• Step-by-step tutorial approach.

  • Shows how to build and execute complete applications from start to finish.

• Application-Driven™ methodology.

  • Includes 31 tutorials and 100+ exercises based on real-world applications.

• Full four-color presentation.

  • Invites students into the text and keeps them reading.

• Syntax coloring.

  • Code is colored similar to the way it appears in Visual Studio .NET.

• Code highlighting—Emphasizes key portions of the source-code listings in the text using a yellow background highlight.

  • Draws students attention to featured program segments.

• Line numbers.

  • Provides easy reference in every sample program.

• Screenshots—Shows the output of every sample program.

  • Allows students to see the effects of their programming, firsthand.

  • Shows students screen captures on the page exactly as they appear on their computer screens.

• Seven icon-based tip categories—Includes Good Programming Practices, Software Design Tips, Common Programming Errors, GUI Design Tips, Error Prevention Tips, Performance Tips and Portability Tips.

  • Draws students' attention to the nuances that make programming easier or that often trip up novices.

• Graphics and multimedia-rich content.

  • Makes the text inviting and accessible to students regardless of their preferred learning styles.

• UML activity diagrams—Replace flowcharts.

  • Allows students to gain practice reading the types of diagrams used in industry.

• Glossary—Includes Visual Basic .NET and programming terms.

  • Ensures that students gain fluency in the language necessary for professional-level programming.

• Self-review exercises and answers—After almost all sections in a tutorial.

  • Gives students the opportunity to test their understanding of concepts and procedures and receive feedback on their progress.

• Multi-level index.

  • Makes it easy for students to find exactly the information for which they are looking.

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Description

• Copyright 2003
• Dimensions: Special (all other)
• Pages: 826
• Edition: 1st

• Book
• ISBN-10: 0-13-140553-5
• ISBN-13: 978-0-13-140553-0

Simply Visual Basic .NET leverages .NET's true power—not just adapted Visual Basic 6 techniques. Its out-standing pedagogical approach comes from Deitel & Associates—the best-selling programming language authors and renowned instructors who have taught programming to over 1,000,000 people in 100+ countries.

APPLICATION-DRIVEN^™, step-by-step tutorial approach—The Deitels explore core Visual Basic .NET concepts in the context of interesting, real-world applications such as: Web-Based Bookstore • ATM • Automated Phone Directory • Billing • Car Payments • Check Writer • Craps Game • Flag Quiz • Fundraiser • Graphics Painter • Inventory • Investment Interest • Microwave Oven • Payroll • Sales Data • Screen Scraper • Security Panel • Shipping Hub • Ticket Ordering • Typing Application

Key Topics include Visual Studio^® .NET IDE • Visual Programming • Framework Class Library (FCL) • Controls (Buttons, TextBoxes, ListBoxes, Microsoft^™ Chart, Timers, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, Menus, Dialogs and others) • Event Handling • Debugger • Algorithms • Pseudocode • UML^™ • Control Structures • Methods • Random Number Generation • Arrays • Classes • Objects • Collections • Mouse & Keyboard Event Handling • Strings • Sequential-Access Files • Database • Graphics • Multimedia • GUI Design • Web Application Development

Simply Visual Basic .NET Pedagogic Features

• Step-by-step tutorials show how to build and execute complete applications, from start to finish
• DEITEL^™ signature LIVE-CODE^™ approach presents programming concepts using complete working applications
• APPLICATION -DRIVEN^™ design includes 31 tutorials and 100+ exercises on real-world applications
• Full-color presentation, including syntax coloring, code highlighting, callouts and extensive comments
• Skills summaries
• UML activity diagrams
• Debugging sections and exercises that teach the Visual Studio .NET Debugger
• Tips for improving reliability, performance and usability of your applications
• Self-review multiple-choice questions and answers for immediate feedback after each section
• Ten additional multiple-choice questions at the end of every tutorial, plus "What does this code do?" and "What's wrong with this code?" exercises, and four programming exercises all focused on real-world applications, including a "Programming Challenge"
• Special sections on GUI Design Guidelines and on Controls, Events, Properties & Methods are highlighted in each tutorial and as appendices for easy reference
• Key terms sections in every tutorial and a comprehensive glossary at the end of the book
• Instructor's resources, including PowerPoint^® slides, test-item file, Instructor Resource CD and support Web sites with up-to-date information on the book (www.deitel.com and www.prenhall.com/deitel)

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Sample Content

Table of Contents

1. Graphing Application.

Introducing Computers, the Internet and Visual Basic .NET.

2. Welcome Application.

Introducing the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

3. Welcome Application.

Introduction to Visual Programming.

4. Designing the Inventory Application.

Introducing TextBoxes and Buttons.

5. Completing the Inventory Application.

Introducing Programming.

6. Enhancing the Inventory Application.

Introducing Variables, Memory Concepts and Arithmetic.

7. Wage Calculator Application.

Introducing Algorithms, Pseudocode and Program Control.

8. Dental Payment Application.

Introducing CheckBoxes and Message Dialogs.

9. Car Payment Calculator Application.

Introducing the Do While...Loop and Do Until...Loop Repetition Statements.

10. Class Average Application.

Introducing the Do...Loop While and Do Loop...Until Repetition Statements.

11. Interest Calculator Application.

Introducing the For...Next Repetition Statement.

12. Security Panel Application.

Introducing the Select Case Multiple-Selection Statement.

13. Enhancing the Wage Calculator Application.

Introducing Function Procedures and Sub Procedures.

14. Shipping Time Application.

Using Dates and Timers.

15. Fund Raiser Application.

Introducing Scope, Pass-by-Reference and Option Strict.

16. Craps Game Application.

Introducing Random-Number Generation.

17. Flag Quiz Application.

Introducing One-Dimensional Arrays and Combo Boxes.

18. Sales Data Application.

Introducing Two-Dimensional Arrays, RadioButtons and the MSChart Control.

19. Microwave Oven Application.

Building Your Own Classes and Objects.

20. Shipping Hub Application.

Introducing Collections, the For Each...Next Statement and Access Keys.

21. “Cat and Mouse” Painter Application.

Introducing the Graphics Object and Mouse Events.

22. Typing Application.

Introducing Keyboard Events, Menus and Dialogs.

23. Screen Scraping Application.

Introducing String Processing.

24. Ticket Information Application.

Introducing Sequential-Access Files.

25. ATM Application.

Introducing Database Programming.

26. CheckWriter Application.

Introducing Graphics and Printing.

27. Phone Book Application.

Introducing Multimedia Using Microsoft Agent.

28. Bookstore Application: Web Applications.

Introducing Internet Information Services.

29. Bookstore Application: Client Tier.

Introducing Web Controls.

30. Bookstore Application: Information Tier.

Examining the Database and Creating Database Components.

31. Bookstore Application: Middle Tier.

Introducing Code-Behind Files.

Appendix A. Operator Precedence Chart.


Appendix B. ASCII Character Set.


Appendix C. GUI Design Guidelines.


Appendix D. Visual Studio .NET Windows Form Designer Tools.


Appendix E. Controls, Events, Properties and Methods.


Appendix F. Keyword Chart.


Appendix G. Internet Information Services (IIS) Setup Instructions.

Preface

Welcome to Visual Basic .NET and the world of Windows, Internet and World-Wide-Web programming with Visual Studio and the .NET platform! This book, the first in our new Simply series, was a joy to create. Our goal was to write a book that focuses on core concepts and features of Visual Basic .NET while keeping the discussion of this highly technical subject as simple as possible.

To achieve these goals, we implemented an innovative teaching methodology. We present the core concepts of leading-edge computing technologies using the tutorial-based, APPLICATION -DRIVEN^™ approach, combined with the DEITEL^™ signature LIVE-CO/DE^™ approach of teaching programming using complete, working, real-world applications. We merged the notion of a lab manual with that of a conventional textbook, creating a book that is best used by students sitting at computers and building each example application as they read the tutorials.

As students work through the tutorials, they learn about Visual Basic .NET and its fundamental features, such as visual programming concepts, graphical-user-interface (GUI) components, multimedia (audio, images, animation and video), file processing, database processing and Internet and World-Wide-Web-based client/server networking. At the end of most sections, we provide self-review questions with answers so that students receive immediate feedback on their understanding of the material. Hundreds of additional self-review questions with answers are available on this book's Companion Web Site.

Features in Simply Visual Basic. NET

This book is loaded with pedagogic features, including:

• APPLICATION-DRIVEN^™ Tutorial Approach. Each tutorial uses a contemporary, real-world application to teach programming concepts. The examples and exercises are up-to-the-minute with Internet/Web-related examples and with popular applications, such as ATMs, game playing, graphics, multimedia and even a 3-tier Web-based bookstore. Most examples have a business focus. At the beginning of each tutorial, students "test-drive" the completed application so they can see how it works. Then they build the application by following our step-by-step instructions. The book concentrates on the principles of good software engineering and stresses program clarity.
• LIVE-CODE^™ Approach. This book is loaded with LIVE-CODE^™ examples. Each tutorial ends with the complete, working program code and the students can run the application that they just created. We call this method of teaching and writing the LIVE-CoDE^™ Approach. We feel that this approach is more effective than presenting only snippets of code out of the context of a complete program.
• Real-World Technologies. This text incorporates today's technologies to develop useful applications. For example, we use the Unified Modeling Language^™ (UML) to replace flowcharts—an older standard. The UML has become the preferred graphical modeling language for designing object-oriented applications. In Simply Visual Basic.NET, we use UML to show the flow of control for several applications, so students gain practice reading the type of diagrams that are used in industry.
• Visual Programming and Graphical User Interface (GUI). From the first tutorial, we immerse students in visual programming techniques and modifying Visual Basic .NET GUIs. Students who learn these techniques can create graphical programs more quickly and easily. The early tutorials provide students with a foundation for designing GUIs—concepts that they will apply throughout the book as we teach core programming concepts. Many tutorials contain GUI Design Tips that are summarized at the end of the tutorials for easy reference. Additionally, Appendix C compiles all the GUI Design Tips to help students as they prepare for exams.
• Full-Color Presentation. This book is in full color so that students can see sample outputs as they would appear on a monitor. Also, we syntax color the Visual Basic .NET code, similar to the way Visual Studio .NET colors the code in its editor window. This way, students can match what they see in the book with what they see on their own screens. Our syntax-coloring conventions are as follows:
  • comments appear in green
  • keywords appear in dark blue
  • literal values appear in light blue
  • text, class, method and variable names appear in black
  • errors appear in red
• Graphics and Multimedia. Graphics make applications fun to create and use. In our introduction to graphics, Tutorial 26, we discuss Graphical Device Interface (GDI+)—the Windows service that provides the graphical features used by .NET—to teach students to personalize a bank check. In Tutorial 27, we use a fun technology called Microsoft Agent to add interactive, animated characters to a phone book application. With Microsoft Agent, your applications can speak to users and even respond to their voice commands!
• Databases. Databases are crucial to businesses today, and we use real-world applications to teach the fundamentals of database programming. Tutorials 25 and 30 familiarize students with databases, presented in the context of two applications—an ATM and a Web-based bookstore.
• Case Study. This book concludes with a sequence of four tutorials in which the student builds a Web-based, bookstore application. Tutorial 28 familiarizes readers with Microsoft's Internet Information Services (which enables Web publishing), mufti-tier architecture and simple Web transactions. Tutorials 29-31 use ASP.NET and ADO .NET to build an application that retrieves information from a database and displays the information in a Web page.
• Object-Oriented Programming. Object-oriented programming is the most widely employed technique for developing robust, reusable software, and Visual Basic .NET offers advanced object-oriented programming features. This book introduces students to defining classes and using objects, laying a solid foundation for future programming courses.
• Visual Studio .NET Debugger. Debuggers are programs that help programmers find and correct logic errors in program code. Visual Studio .NET contains a powerful debugging tool that allows programmers to analyze their programs line-by-line as the programs execute. Throughout the book, we teach the Visual Studio .NET Debugger; we explain how to use its key features, and offer many debugging exercises.

To the Instructor

Focus of the Book
Our goal was clear: Produce a Visual Basic .NET textbook for introductory-level courses in computer programming aimed at students with little or no programming experience. This book teaches computer programming principles and the Visual Basic .NET language, including data types, control structures, object-oriented programming, Visual Basic .NET classes, GUI concepts, event-driven programming and more. After mastering the material in this book, students will be able to program in Visual Basic.NET and to employ many key capabilities of the .NET platform.

Lab Setup
To install some of the required software for this book, students and instructors will need Administrator-level access to the computer. For university computer labs where students do not have Administrator-level access, instructors and system administrators must ensure that the proper software is installed on the lab computers. In Tutorial 27, certain Microsoft Agent software components must be installed to execute and develop the Phone Book application. If students are not allowed to install software on lab computers, the Microsoft Agent components discussed in Tutorial 27 must be installed in advance. To configure and execute some of the examples and exercises, such as the Bookstore case study in Tutorials 28-31, students will need to have Administrator-level access. In addition, the examples in the book require that students have Debugger or Administrator access to the computer, which is typically required to develop applications in Visual Studio .NET.

A Note Regarding Terminology Used in the Book
In Tutorial 13, we discuss methods as Sub procedures (sometimes called subroutines) and Function procedures (sometimes called functions). We use this terminology .for two reasons. First, the keywords Sub and Function are used in procedure definitions, so this naming is logical for students. Second, Visual Basic professionals have used this terminology for years and will continue to do so in the future. We also use the term "function" at certain points in this text to refer to Visual Basic 6 Function procedures that remain in Visual Basic.NET (such as Val and Pmt). When we introduce object-oriented programming concepts in Tutorial 19, we discuss the difference between procedures and methods and indicate that the procedures defined throughout the text are, in fact, methods. We hope our use of terminology helps you present the material in a simple and understandable manner.

Exception Handling: Bonus Tutorial Available Online
Exception Handling is one of the most important topics in Visual Basic .NET for building mission-critical and business-critical applications. Programmers need to know how to recognize the exceptions (errors) that could occur in software components and handle those exceptions effectively, allowing programs to deal with problems and continue executing instead of "crashing." This tutorial overviews the proper use of exception handling, including the termination model of exception handling, throwing and catching exceptions and the library class Exception. To download this tutorial, please go to www.deitel.com.

Objectives
Each tutorial begins with objectives that inform students of what to expect and give them an opportunity, after reading the tutorial, to determine whether they have met the intended goals.

Outline
The tutorial outline enables students to approach the material in top-down fashion. Along with the tutorial objectives, the outline helps students anticipate future topics and set a comfortable and effective learning pace.

Example Programs (with Program Outputs)
We present Visual Basic .NET features in the context of complete, working Visual Basic .NET programs. We call this our LIVE-CODE^™ approach. All examples are available on the CD that accompanies the book or as downloads from our Web site, www.deitel.com.

Illustrations/Figures
An abundance of charts, line drawings and program outputs are included. The discussion of control structures, for example, features carefully drawn UML activity diagrams. Note: We do not teach UML diagramming as a program-development tool, but we do use UML diagrams to explain the precise operation of many of Visual Basic .NET'S control structures.

Programming Tips
Hundreds of programming tips to help students focus on important aspects of program development. These tips and practices represent the best the authors have gleaned from a combined seven decades of programming and teaching experience.

Good Programming Practices
Good Programming Practices highlight techniques that help students write programs that are clearer, more understandable and more maintainable.
• Common Programming Errors
  Students learning a language—especially in their first programming course—frequently make errors. Pointing out these Common Programming Errors in the text reduces the likelihood that students will make the same mistakes.
• Error Prevention Tips
  These tips describe aspects of Visual Basic .NET that prevent errors from getting into programs in the first place, which simplifies the testing and debugging process.
• Performance Tips
  Teaching students to write clear and understandable programs is the most important goal for a first programming course. But students want to write programs that run the fastest, use the least memory, require the smallest number of keystrokes, etc. Performance Tips highlight opportunities for improving program performance.
• Portability Tips
  The Portability Tips provide insights on how Visual Basic .NET achieves its high degree of portability among .NET platforms.
• Software Design Tips
  The Software Design Tips highlight architectural and design issues that affect the construction of object-oriented software systems.
• GUI Design Tips
  The GUI Design Tips highlight graphical-user-interface conventions to help students design attractive, user-friendly GUIs and use GUI features.

Skills Summary
Each tutorial includes a bullet-list-style summary of the new programming concepts presented. This reinforces key actions taken to build the application in each tutorial.

Key Terms
Each tutorial includes a list of important terms defined in the tutorial. These terms also appear in the index and in a book-wide glossary, so the student can locate terms and their definitions quickly.

230 Self-Review Questions and Answers
Self-review multiple-choice questions and answers are included after most sections to build students' confidence with the material and prepare them for the regular exercises. Students should be encouraged to attempt all the self-review exercises and check their answers.

834 Exercises (Solutions in Instructor's Manual)
Each tutorial concludes with exercises. Typical exercises include 10 multiple-choice questions, a "What does this code do?" exercise, a "What's wrong with this code?" exercise and a programming challenge. The questions involve simple recall of important terminology and concepts, writing individual Visual Basic .NET statements, writing small portions of Visual Basic.NET applications and writing complete Visual Basic .NET methods, classes and applications. Every programming exercise uses a step-by-step methodology to suggest how to solve the problems. The solutions for the exercises are available only to instructors through their Prentice-Hall representatives. NOTE: Please do not write to us requesting the instructor's manual. Distribution of this publication is strictly limited to instructors teaching from the book. Instructors may obtain the solutions manual only from their regular Prentice Hall representatives. We regret that we cannot provide the solutions to professionals.

GUI Design Guidelines
Consistent and proper graphical user interface design is crucial to visual programming. In each tutorial, we summarize the GUI design guidelines that were introduced. Appendix C, presents a cumulative list of these GUI design guidelines for easy reference.

Controls, Events, Properties & Methods Summaries
Each tutorial includes a summary of the controls, events, properties and methods covered in the tutorial. The summary includes a picture of each control, shows the control "in action" and lists the control's properties, events and methods that were discussed up to and including that tutorial. In addition, Appendix E groups the controls by tutorial for easy reference.

Index
The extensive index includes important terms both under main headings and as separate entries so that students can search for any term or concept by keyword. The code examples and the exercises also are included in the index. For every Visual Basic .NET source-code program in the book, we indexed it both under the appropriate application and as a subindex item under "code examples." We have also double-indexed features such as controls and properties. This makes it easier to find examples using particular features.

Simply Visual Basic.NET Ancillary Package

Simply Visual Basic .NET is accompanied by extensive ancillary materials for instructors, including the following:

• Instructor's Resource CD (IRCD) which contains the
• Instructor's Manual with solutions to the end-of-tutorial exercises and
• Test-Item File of multiple-choice questions (approximately two per tutorial section).
• Customizable PowerPoint^® Slides containing all the code and figures in the text, and bulleted items that summarize the key points in the text. The slides are downloadable from www.deitel.com and are available as part of Prentice Hall's Companion Web Site (www.prenhall.com/deitel) for Simply Visual Basic.NET, which offers resources for both instructors and students.

Companion Web Site
For instructors, the Companion Web Site offers a Syllabus Manager, which helps instructors plan courses interactively and create online syllabi. Students also benefit from the functionality of the Companion Web Site. Book-specific resources for students include:

• PowerPoint^® slides
• Example source code
• Reference materials from the book appendices
• Tutorial objectives
• Tutorial summaries
• Tutorial outlines
• Programming tips from each tutorial
• Online Study Guide—contains additional short-answer self-review exercises with answers
• Students can track their results and course performance on quizzes using the Student Profile feature, which records and manages all feedback and results from tests taken on the Companion Web Site. To access the Companion Web Site for Simply Visual Basic.NET, visit www.prenhall.com/deitel.

Simply Visual Basic.NET Multimedia Cyber Classroom

For the second edition of Simply Visual Basic.NET, we are planning to include the Simply Visual Basic .NET. An APPLICATION-DRIVEN^™, Tutorial Approach Multimedia Cyber Classroom interactive CD. Our Cyber Classrooms are loaded with e-Learning features that are ideal for both learning and reference.

Each Cyber Classroom CD provides an introduction in which the authors overview the Cyber Classroom's features. The textbook's LIVE-CODE^™ examples truly "come alive" in the Cyber Classrooms. If you are viewing a program and want to execute it, you just click the lightning-bolt icon, and the program will run. You will see—and hear, when working with audio-based multimedia programs—the program's outputs immediately. If you want to modify a program and see the effects of your changes, click the floppy-disk icon that causes the source code to be "lifted off" the CD and "dropped into" one of your own directories so you can edit the text, recompile the program and try out your new version. Click the audio icon, and one of the authors will discuss the program and "walk you through" the code.

The Cyber Classrooms also provide navigational aids, including extensive hyperlinking. The Cyber Classrooms are browser based, so they remember sections that you have visited recently and allows you to move forward or backward among them. The thousands of index entries are hyperlinked to their text occurrences. Furthermore, when you key in a term using the "find" feature, the Cyber Classrooms locate occurrences of that term throughout the text. The Table of Contents entries are "hot," so clicking a tutorial name takes you immediately to that tutorial.

Course Management Systems

Selected content from Simply Visual Basic. NET and other Deitel texts, is available to integrate into various Course Management Systems, including CourseCompass, Blackboard and WebCT. Course Management Systems help faculty create, manage and use sophisticated Web—based educational tools and programs. Blackboard, CourseCompass and WebCT offer:

• Features to create and customize an online course
• Communication tools
• Flexible testing tools
• Support materials

In addition to the tools found in Blackboard and WebCT, CourseCompass from Prentice Hall includes:

• CourseCompass course home page, which makes the course as easy to navigate as a book.
• Hosting on Prentice Hall's centralized servers, which allows course administrators to avoid separate licensing fees or server-space issues.
• "How Do I" online-support sections are available for users who need help personalizing course sites.
• Instructor Quick Start Guide

Premium Course Management Systems
For the second edition of Simply Visual Basic .NET, we are planning support for Premium Course Management Systems that integrate content from a rich variety of sources, including Deitel books, Cyber Classrooms and Companion Web Sites with Course Management courseware—providing enhanced content to users. Premium Course Management Systems include:

• Pre-Loaded DEITEL^™ Content in a Customizable Interface. An instructor can aggregate and customize all course materials. This feature includes the e-Book, a searchable digital version of the book, and downloadable PowerPoint^® slides.
• All the Interactivity of the Cyber Classroom. Students can work with code and receive the added benefit of several hours of detailed audio descriptions of thousands of lines of code to help reinforce concepts. Every code example from the books is included.
• Abundant Self-Assessment and Complete Test-Item File. Use or edit hundreds of pre-loaded assessments, or upload your own. Assessments include self-review exercises, programming exercises (half with answers included) and test questions. Instructors choose which questions to assign, and students receive immediate feedback. Instructors can collect students' work and track their progress in an online gradebook.

To view free online demonstrations and learn more about Course Management Systems that support Deitel content, visit the following Web sites:

• Blackboard: www.blackboard.com and www.prenhall.com/blackboard.
• WebCT: www.webct.com and www.prenhall.com/webct.
• CourseCompass: www.coursecompass.com and www.prenhall.com/coursecompass.

For Students and Instructors: Important Information before You Begin

Please follow the instructions in this section to ensure that you have the proper setup before you begin this book.

Font and Naming Conventions
We use fonts to distinguish between IDE features (such as menu names and menu items) and other elements that appear in the IDE. Our convention is to emphasize IDE features in a sans-serif bold Helvetica font (for example, Properties window) and to emphasize program text in a serif Luci da font (for example, Di m x As Boolean). We use italics to emphasize special terms that are associated with Visual Studio .NET features, such as Intellisense and Parameter Info.

Software Bundled with Simply Visual Basic.NET

In the college bookstores, this book is shrink-wrapped with a trial edition of the Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® .NET integrated development environment. This is a full and complete version of Visual Studio .NET which may be used without charge for 60 days, at which time it becomes inoperable. No technical support accompanies this edition.

Students-enrolled in a course at an accredited school who have purchased this book for use in conjunction with that course may purchase Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Standard Edition from Microsoft for $15.00 (US) plus shipping and handling. The standard edition is fully functional and is shipped on 5 CDs. There is no time limit and technical support is available upon registration of the software after installation.

To purchase this software, you must obtain a purchase code from your instructor. This code is supplied to your instructor by Prentice Hall. To order Visual Basic .NET Standard Edition, visit

www.gotdotnet.com/community/student/reference/purchase.aspx

and follow the instructions. A credit card is required to complete the purchase. Professionals can obtain the 60-day trial edition of Visual Studio .NET from

www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/trial/default.asp.

Hardware and Software Requirements to Run Visual Basic .NET

To install and run Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft recommends that PCs have these minimum requirements:

• Pentium II 450 MHz processor
• Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6 or later operating system
• 64 megabytes for a Windows NT 4.0 computer; 96 MB for Windows 2000 Professional and 160 MB for Windows XP Professional
• 2.5 gigabytes of available hard drive space
• CD-ROM (DVD for the trial version)
• Super VGA monitor with 256 colors
• Mouse or other Microsoft-compatible pointing device
• You must install Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) before installing Visual Studio .NET. Otherwise, the Web-based bookstore application in the case study cannot be created or executed. See Appendix G for detailed instructions on installing IIS.

This book assumes that you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP, plus Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS). Additional setup instructions for Web servers and other software is available on our Web site along with the examples. Note: This is copyrighted material. Feel free to use it as you study, but you may not republish any portion of it in any form without explicit permission from Prentice Hall and the authors.

Monitor Display Settings

Simply Visual Basic .NET includes hundreds of screenshots of applications. Your monitor-display settings may need to be adjusted so that the screenshots in the book will match what you see on your computer screen as you develop each application. Note: We refer to single-clicking with the left mouse button as selecting, or clicking. We refer to double-clicking with the left mouse button simply as double clicking. Follow these steps to set your monitor display correctly:

1. Open the Control Panel and double click Display.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the Advanced... button.
4. In the General tab, make sure Small Fonts is selected; this should indicate that 96 dpi is now the setting (if you already have this setting, you do not need to do anything else).
5. Click Apply.

If you choose to use different settings, the Size and Location values we provide for different GUI elements (such as Buttons and Labels) in each application might not appear correctly on your screen. If so, simply adjust Size and Location values so the GUI elements in your application appear similar to those in the screenshots in the book.

Theme Settings for Windows XP Users

If you are using Windows XP, we assume that your theme is set to Windows Classic Style. Follow these steps to set Windows XP to display the Windows Classic theme:

1. Open the Control Panel and double click Display.
2. Click the Themes tab. Select Windows Classic from the Theme: dropdown list.
3. Click OK to save the settings.

Copying and Organizing Files

All of the examples for Simply Visual Basic.NET are included on the CD-ROM that accompanies this textbook. Follow the steps in the box, Copying the Book Examples from the CD-ROM, to copy the examples folder from the CD-ROM onto your hard drive. We suggest that you work from your hard drive rather than your CD drive for two reasons: you cannot save your programs to the book's CD (the CD is read-only), and files can be accessed faster from a hard drive than from a CD. The examples from the book (and our other publications) are also available on the Internet as downloads from the following Web sites:

• www.deitel.com
• www.prenhall.com/deitel

Screen shots in the box, Copying the Book Examples from the CD-ROM, might differ slightly from what you see on your computer, depending on whether you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP We used Windows 2000 to prepare the screenshots for this book.

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Updates

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