Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

When Microsoft made Visual Basic into an object-oriented programming language, millions of VB developers resisted the change to the .NET platform. Now, after integrating feedback from their customers and creating Visual Basic 2005, Microsoft finally has the right carrot. Visual Basic 2005 offers the power of the .NET platform, yet restores the speed and convenience of Visual Basic. Accordingly, we've revised the classic in a Nutshell guide to the Visual Basic language to cover the Visual Basic 2005 version and all of its new features.

Unlike other books on the subject, Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition doesn't assume you're a novice. It's a detailed, professional reference to the Visual Basic language-a reference that you can use to jog your memory about a particular language element or parameter. It'll also come in handy when you want to make sure that there isn't some "gotcha" you've overlooked with a particular language feature.

The book is divided into three major parts: Part I introduces the main features and concepts behind Visual Basic programming; Part II thoroughly details all the functions, statements, directives, objects, and object members that make up the Visual Basic language; and Part III contains a series of helpful appendices. Some of the new features covered include Generics, a convenient new library called My Namespace, and the operators used to manipulate data in Visual Basic.

No matter how much experience you have programming with Visual Basic, you want Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition close by, both as a standard reference guide and as a tool for troubleshooting and identifying programming problems.

Tim Patrick is Senior Software Architect at TiMaki Services developing custom client/server and multi-tier software solutions targeting Microsoft Windows client workstations and Internet/Intranet/Extranet users. Tim has over twenty years experience in software development and software architecture. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD). He wrote The Visual Basic Style Guide and its successor, The Visual Basic .NET Style Guide. He has also published many magazine articles on topics related to Visual Basic development.

Steven Roman, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. His previous books with O'Reilly include "Access Database Design and Programming", "Writing Excel Macros with VBA", and "Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic".

Ron Petrusha is an editor for O'Reilly and is the author/coauthor of many books, including VBScript in a Nutshell. Ron has a background in quantitative labor history, specializing in Russian labor history, and holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Columbia University. He began working with computers in the mid 1970s, programming in SPSS (a programmable statistical package) and FORTRAN on the IBM 370 family. Since then, he has been a computer book buyer, an editor of a number of books on Windows and Unix, and a consultant on projects written in dBASE, Clipper, and Visual Basic.

Paul Lomax, author of O'Reilly's VB & VBA in a Nutshell and a coauthor of VBScript in a Nutshell, is an experienced VB programmer with a passion for sharing his knowledge--and his collection of programming tips and techniques gathered from real-world experience.