Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
    • Introducing the Start Page
    • Using Dynamic Help
    • The New Projects Dialog
    • Exploring the Visual Studio .NET IDE
    • Using the Project Menu
    • Using the Build Menu
    • Managing Code Windows and Designers
    • Getting the Right Toolbars
    • Customizing Your Environment
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET

Yesterday you learned about the .NET Framework and what it means to you as a developer. For the next 20 days, you're going to learn how to write applications using the .NET Framework and how to use the tools to achieve rapid application development (RAD). All of that starts with having a solid understanding of the development tool that you'll be using: Visual Studio .NET. Visual Studio .NET includes everything you need to rapidly develop and debug all aspects of any type of application that you can think of. It's somewhat overshadowed by the whole concept of .NET. The bottom line to you is that anything and everything was thought of when the development environment was designed. In fact, most of it was written using .NET. So, from the .NET Framework to the tool you use to write .NET Framework applications, .NET was used. Many of the items you learn about today might seem to be stating the obvious, if you're a seasoned Visual Basic 6 or Visual Studio 6 developer, and most of the IDE might seem familiar, or at least can be figured out by clicking around for a few hours. I still recommend reading through this chapter because there are some nice features in .NET that might pleasantly surprise you. Today you learn about

• The many windows and menu options available in Visual Studio .NET
• Generating help pages for your applications
• How to use Dynamic Help
• The different project types and what types of applications you can write
• Creating code libraries using the .NET Toolbox
• Customizing your development environment

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