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Pro VB 2008 and the NET 3 5 Platform Windows Net
Pro VB 2008 and the NET 3 5 Platform Windows Net
Whether you’re moving to .NET for the first time, or you’re already writing applications on .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.0, Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform will provide you with a solid grounding in this new technology and serve as a comprehensive reference throughout your coding career:
- Explore five new chapters of content—including the grammar of the common intermediate language (CIL), .NET generics, and object serialization services.
- Discover all the new .NET 3.5 features—nullable types, delegate covariance, ASP.NET 2.0 master pages, the new Windows Forms “Strip” controls, and much more.
- Get a professional foothold—targeted to appeal to experienced software professionals and/or graduate students of computer science (so don’t expect three chapters on iteration or decision constructs!).
- Gain a rock–solid foundation in programming using Visual Basic.
- Get comfortable with all the core aspects of the .NET platform—including assemblies, remoting, Windows Forms, Web Forms, ADO.NET, XML web services, and much more.
Once you’ve digested the information contained in the 25 chapters of this 1000+ page book, you’ll be ready to apply this knowledge to your specific programming assignments and well equipped to explore the .NET universe on your own.
What you’ll learn
- Everything you need to put .NET 3.5 and Visual Basic 2008 to use in your professional workbefore anyone else!
- Insights and techniques from the author’s experience since .NET 1.0
- Complete coverage of .NET 3.5—WPF, WCF and WF
Who is this book for?
Anyone with some software development experience interested in the new .NET 3.5 Platform and the Visual Basic language. Whether you’re moving to .NET for the first time or you’re already writing applications on .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.0, this book will provide you with a solid grounding in this new technology and serve as a comprehensive reference throughout your coding career.
Related Titles
- Beginning VB 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional
- Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008: From Novice to Professional
- Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
- Pro WPF in VB 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.5
About the Apress Pro Series
You have gotten the job; now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard-won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Wow! This is THE book for VB2008 and/or .NET 3.5!!!
I cannot over-rate this book. I’ve been developing systems for 40 years, and I’ve never seen a better book of this type. The author, Andrew Troelsen, really knows his stuff, and knows how to teach it. I only wish I’d had his VB 2005/.NET 2.0 book two years ago when I started trying to learn .NET! There’s a lot of advanced material in this book, but it’s good for any experienced programmer who wants to really learn .NET and VB 2008. It explains not only the what, but the why and how. If you need a book on this material, this is absolutely the one to get, period.
5 Stars The reference book all VB.net programmers should have.
I, for one, miss the days of large reference manuals as opposed to help files and Google searches. For me this book is a throwback in terms of its completeness and scope. If you program in VB.net I feel this is a must-have reference. I’ve given it to 2 of my developer friends already and plan to give it again. Do yourself and your career a favor. God bless.
Beginning ASP NET 3 5 in VB 2008 From Novice to Professional Second Edition Beginning from Novice to Professional

The most up-to-date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of VB 2008. The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real-world web sites right from the beginningrather than just faking it with simplified coding practices. By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great reference for ASP.NET 3.5
Very thorough and easy to understand presentation of ASP.NET 3.5. I would recommend this book to beginners as well as those who already use ASP.NET and would like information about some of the differences between versions.
4 Stars A MUST have!
I’m a database developer that dabbles in application development. I’ve worked with every version of Visual Basic released by Microsoft, every version of “Classic” ASP, and ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 (Sorry, no .NET 2.0).
I needed a book that would give me the basics of ASP.NET 3.5 using VB so that I could get up to speed for a new project. This book was perfect!
Too many other books have either completely abandoned VB and are now strictly for C# developers, or, give lip service to Visual Basic and “offer” to let you download VB examples from their website. Not much help to those of us that aren’t C# gurus. (Ever try converting C pointer reference syntax to something comparable in VB? Not so much…)
This book starts with a short history of .NET, gives you a couple chapters of VB.NET basics (syntax/control structures/classes/objects/etc.), and then jumps into building web pages. I used (FREE) Visual Web EXPRESS 2008 as my platform and never missed an example in the book.
I spent about an hour or two a day mulling over the different chapters and within a week or so was pumping out web pages filled with bound and unbound data from a MS SQL 2005 database.
While this isn’t a monkey-see-monkey-do (step-by-step) book, it is full of code snippets and detailed explanations of how things work. If you need, you can always download the full source code for all the examples and then step through the code using the debug feature of VW 2008 Express.
Considering the very limited number of Visual Basic books on ASP.NET 3.5, this book is a MUST HAVE for anyone/everyone looking to move up from previous versions of .NET (And a good starting point for .NET newbies). It is a fixture in my cube for use as a quick reference to answer the too often question of “How did I do that before…”
The only reason I didn’t give it fives stars was because it’s coverage of Ajax was so sparse (one quick/short chapter). But, considering that Ajax is a language/architecture in itself, it really wouldn’t be fair to expect too much coverage in a “Beginner’s” book.
1 Star THIS BOOK IS A COMPLETE AND DELIBERATE SCAM
THIS BOOK IS A COMPLETE SCAM! It should have been called Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 with VB 2005 (NOT ASP.NET 3.5 with VB 2008). Why? because there is no 3.5/2008 specific content in this book what-so-ever! I could not believe this while i was reading.
He spends a chapter discussing the VB language and syntax, non of which contain the new language features or changes in the VB language, all examples will work in VB 2005 without issue. In fact, there is not even a mention of LINQ, which is the most important part of the new VB 2008 (VB9) language. In fact, he goes further by giving us chapters and chapters on accessing data using outdated data access methods and SQL statements, non of which is necesssary anymore thanks to LINQ (WHICH HE MENTIONS NOTHING ABOUT).
It talks about the old, outdated controls of ASP.NET 2.0 which are no longer used or necessary due to the newer and much better controls available in asp.net 3.5 (in which he mentions NOTHING about).
I still can’t believe apress would allow something like this to go through. This really is a book about ASP.NET 2.0 and VB 2005 ONLY. There really is nothing (NOTHING, not even one bit) of anything related to exclusive ASP.NET 3.5 or VB 2008 features and content!!!!
What a damn disappointment, when you are reading a book and realize you’ve practically read the exact same book 3 years ago and there is nothing new in it!
Thankfully I didn’t buy it and downloaded a copy off the internet to review it before buying it.
THIS IS A COMPLETE SCAM, DO NOT BUY IT.
5 Stars Excellent ASP.NET book for experienced developers
This is an excellent book for experienced programmers, such as me, wanting in-depth knowledge they can apply on the job. This book is not, however, for novice programmers as the book’s title suggests. For example, in Chapter 4 the succinct explanation of “Storing Information in the List” for the Currency Converter will I suspect completely confuse the inexperienced programmer.
You will learn what you need to know to be an effective working ASP.NET developer–the coverage is through.
The book provides extensive references to supplementary material such as www.w3schools.com/xhtml which the working developer needs to know but is not directly germane to the coverage of ASP.NET 3.5.
The Note and Tip sections are very useful in describing ways to solve problems just discussed or to provide alternate ways to do what was just discussed.
The author provides solutions to problems that other writers just don’t. For example, instead of just saying that using session state is not scalable and stopping there McDonald offers a way to make session state much more scalable and shows you how. Another example would be overlapping exception handlers. This is just the kind of additional information a working professional needs to implement a more responsive and better website.
The code examples are clear and they work. Almost every chapter has ready-to-run code examples all of which work in IE (I haven’t tested in FF).
The only downsides I found in the book are: Inexperienced programmers will get lost. I did find one typo in the code printed in the book on page 198 but not in the downloadable code samples. Also, it would have been helpful to have the URLs for the Pubs and Northwind database downloads from Microsoft instead of just referring to a readme.txt file I didn’t have.
I have being doing serious ASP.NET development work since VS 2003 was released and have five other ASP.NET books NONE of which are as useful as this book–it is the best one in my library. If you are an experienced programmer wanting in-depth knowledge of ASP.NET get this book . If you are not an experienced programmer or have no knowledge of ASP.NET get another book this book is probably not for you.
5 Stars Great book on ASP.NET
I have to say this is one of the first technical books that I actually enjoyed reading. It provides a more solid understanding of what ASP.NET is and what it encompasses for someone who has learned it on the job but never really took a class on it.
It’s well written and I learned some cool stuff. The sections that stuck out to me were the first chapter on what exactly the .NET Framework is, the section detailing the page life cycle and the chapter on ASP.NET AJAX. Great job Matthew.
Visual Basic Graphics Programming Wrox Briefs
Visual Basic Graphics Programming Wrox Briefs
Would you ever write a complex graphics application in Visual Basic (VB)? Author Rod Stephens presents a convincing demonstration that Visual Basic 5.0 can handle just about any complex graphics task, including bitmap processing, complex scan conversions, fractal image generation, 3-D vector graphics, and even ray tracing.
You’ll need to understand VB basics before picking up Visual Basic Graphics Programming, but the book’s clear writing style and measured pace will help you master these relatively arcane subjects and add powerful graphics features to your programs. The book begins with a quick brush-up on standard Visual Basic graphics features such as coordinate systems, graphics objects, and calls to Windows graphics application programming interfaces (APIs), but quickly moves on to a broad spectrum of bitmap- and vector-oriented topics.
The world may not need another Photoshop or AutoCAD written in VB, but if any aspect of your program could benefit from the addition of complex graphics–possibilities include anything from an enhanced interface to data visualization–this book can show you how it’s done. Visual Basic Graphics Programming also serves as a fine introduction to many classic graphics techniques that are more traditionally presented in C. The bundled CD includes all code examples from the book as well as a large library of useful graphics functions and procedures.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Excellent reference
This is a good book for anyone with some knowledge about Visual Basic who wants to know how to make better graphics in the language. It starts off with the basics–lines, API functions, etc. Later, it has sections on more complex topics, such as ray tracing and higher-dimensional graphics.
5 Stars Well-Done Stephens!
This book includes a lot of ideas and concepts that extremely serve graphics programmers. I really found this book very useful, and it gave me new ideas that enhanced my way in programming. Besides it gives the reader full illustration for some problems in descriptive geometry and numerical analysis. REALLY Well-done Rod! Adel
4 Stars Rod Stephens is a very good teacher for an apt student
This is a very good programming book, especially in teaching graphics techniques. It starts out a little over simplified, but eventually it evolves. The first few chapters you build a simple graphical applications. Then luckily you start over with a more organize application.
Rod Stephens has a great style of teaching and this is only the first book I bought by him three years ago. All his other books are very useful.
However as another critic here said the code it not in ready to run form for other applications. If you are an apt student and programmer the conversion is not difficult. This is a teaching book, building complex class function libraries was not it’s goal. You will have tons of fun with this book and all his others.
5 Stars The best I’ve ever read!!!
This book covers everything u ever wanted to know about Graphics Programming (especially in VB) for Windows. Don’t spend time learning DirectX. If u want to be a pro windows programmer - get this book! I been looking for something like this for years, and I really feel this is the best book about Windows Graphics Programming ever written!
4 Stars thank you…thank you…thank you ….but!
I’m a developer in development company and one of the languages I using it is the : VBx language. I searched for all VB source code in the internet, that teaching the graphics techniques, but no way, then I found this book it’s very good, covering all subject that you want to know, specially the mathematical formula, which is unavailable for programmers in one book, C programmers will not have peace now in multimedia field.
But I have two comments about this book : 1- All examples in the book are not designed to support the JPEG,GIF image format, when the book work in VB5 . 2- Some examples not working and giving this message “This monitor does not support palettes.”. But again I can say thank you and I’m happy to have this book in my computer library.
Murachs ASP NET 3 5 Web Programming with VB 2008
Murachs ASP NET 3 5 Web Programming with VB 2008

This book is for Visual Basic developers who want to learn how to develop professional web applications with Microsoft’s ASP.NET 3.5. The first 4 chapters present a quick-start course that works both for beginners and for experienced web developers who are new to ASP.NET. Then, the next four sections present (1) the skills you need for any business application, (2) the skills you need for database applications, (3) the skills you need for e-commerce applications, and (4) the skills you need for developing code that can be reused in other web applications. Along the way, you’ll learn about .NET 3.5 enhancements that streamline web development, like the ListView and DataPager controls, LINQ, and AJAX.
LINQ Pocket Reference Pocket Reference OReilly
LINQ Pocket Reference Pocket Reference OReilly

Ready to take advantage of LINQ with C# 3.0? This guide has the detail you need to grasp Microsoft’s new querying technology, and concise explanations to help you learn it quickly. And once you begin to apply LINQ, the book serves as an on-the-job reference when you need immediate reminders. All the examples in the LINQ Pocket Reference are preloaded into LINQPad, the highly praised utility that lets you work with LINQ interactively. Created by the authors and free to download, LINQPad will not only help you learn LINQ, it will have you thinking in LINQ. This reference explains: LINQ’s key concepts, such as deferred execution, iterator chaining, and type inference in lambda expressions The differences between local and interpreted queries C# 3.0’s query syntax in detail-including multiple generators, joining, grouping, query continuations, and more Query syntax versus lambda syntax, and mixed syntax queries Composition and projection strategies for complex queries All of LINQ’s 40-plus query operators How to write efficient LINQ to SQL queries How to build expression trees from scratch All of LINQ to XML’s types and their advanced use LINQ promises to be the locus of a thriving ecosystem for many years to come. This small book gives you a huge head start. “The authors built a tool (LINQPad) that lets you experiment with LINQ interactively in a way that the designers of LINQ themselves don’t support, and the tool has all kinds of wonderful features that LINQ, SQL and Regular Expression programmers alike will want to use regularly long after they’ve read the book.” -Chris Sells, Connected Systems Program Manager, Microsoft
