“I have never reviewed a book I enjoyed as much as this one. Excellent coverage, perfect for the intended audience. Concise, clear, accurate descriptions. This is a winner.”

       –Ken Getz, MCW Technologies, LLC

This book is the fastest, best way for experienced programmers to truly master real-world Visual Basic 2005 development. You won’t just learn syntax and features: you’ll build a complete, robust, data-driven application. You’ll put Visual Basic 2005 to work in solving real business problems, overcoming the practical challenges of building production systems, and you will learn to see Visual Basic 2005 projects as they were intended–as complete, cohesive solutions. Patrick’s engaging style and crystal-clear explanations will help you stay focused, learn fast, and apply what you’ve learned.

•    Master every stage of the application lifecycle and every step in the development process

•    Walk through all facets of database design and ADO.NET data access

•    Create advanced Windows applications with Windows Forms and Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0

•    Make the most of classes, inheritance, and other object-oriented Visual Basic 2005 features

•    Effectively utilize data types, generics, error processing, XML, GDI+, and many other language and platform features

•    Learn how to personalize and restrict your application’s features based on user preferences

•    Determine the best way to license, localize, document, deploy, and support your application

Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005 is the perfect tutorial for existing Visual Basic programmers moving to Visual Basic 2005, programmers moving from other traditional procedural languages, and experienced Visual Basic .NET/2005 programmers who want to deepen their skills in developing entire projects.

Tim Patrick is a software architect and developer with nearly 25 years of experience in designing and building custom software solutions. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, he spends his days writing Visual Basic 2005 applications. Tim is the author of The Visual Basic Style Guide and The Visual Basic .NET Style Guide, and co-author of Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell and Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook.

The companion website (www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321398009) contains the complete software application and source code for the book, plus chapter-specific versions showing each step of the sample project’s construction.  The code was written to work with every edition of Visual Studio 2005, Visual Basic 2005, and SQL Server 2005, including Microsoft’s free Express editions.

Source Code

Download the Source Code from this book.

NOTE: Some readers who downloaded this file prior to January 15, 2007 reported problems opening the project templates for Chapters 19 to 23. If you experience such problems, please download this file once again, and reinstall the Project Templates according to the instructions on page 826. Answer "yes" when prompted to overwrite existing files with the same name.

Related Articles

Implementing Real-Time Language Translation Using .NET Control Adapters

Persisting Your Visual Basic .NET Objects with .NET Serialization

Text File Operations in .NET

Web Resources

Barcode Font

Font Information
Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005
by Tim Patrick

The Library Project designed in Start-to-Finished Visual Basic 2005 uses a barcode font supplied by you to print barcode labels. The following is a list of some resources you can use to locate a barcode font.

Free 3 of 9 Barcode Font - Matt Welch has designed a "Code 3 of 9" (also called "Code 39") font that you can use for your personal use for free. It is available on many web sites across the Internet. Here is one link you can use to access this font.
• http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/

Fonts for Purchase - Several companies sell commercial barcode fonts for professional and business use. Almost any TrueType barcode font sold by these companies will work with the Library Project. Here is one commercial site that offers a large collection of barcode fonts.
• http://www.bizfonts.com/

Searching for Barcodes - Your favorite search engine can locate barcode fonts for you. The following link performs a barcode font search on Google.
• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22barcode+font%22

Information on Barcode Fonts - If you want to find out more about barcodes, barcode fonts, and how they are used, see Wikipedia's article on barcodes.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

Author's Site

Visit the Author's Web Site.

Online Sample Chapter

An Introduction to .NET for Beginners

Sample Chapter(s)

Download the Sample Chapter from this book.

Table of Contents

Preface                            xv

Acknowledgments            xix

About the Author              xxi

Chapter 1                         Introducing .NET               1

Chapter 2                         Introducing Visual Basic     35

Chapter 3                         Introducing the Project     91

Chapter 4                         Designing the Database     115

Chapter 5                         .NET Assemblies               157

Chapter 6                         Data and Data Types        187

Chapter 7                         Windows Forms               231

Chapter 8                         Classes and Inheritance    275

Chapter 9                         Error Processing               317

Chapter 10                       ADO.NET                          339

Chapter 11                       Security                           369

Chapter 12                       Operator Overloading       401

Chapter 13                       XML                                 437

Chapter 14                       Application Settings           471

Chapter 15                       Files and Directories          499

Chapter 16                       Generics                           521

Chapter 17                       GDI+                               553

Chapter 18                       Localization and Globalization   597

Chapter 19                       Printing                             627

Chapter 20                       Reporting                         661

Chapter 21                       Licensing Your Application  697

Chapter 22                       Web Development            735

Chapter 23                       Adding Online Help            771

Chapter 24                       Deployment                     791

Chapter 25                       Project Complete             817

Appendix A                       Installing the Software      825

Appendix B                       Software License Agreement    829

Index                               831