Programming in Visual Basic 2005
Introduction
Visual Basic is the most popular programming language on the planet. Yet, the majority of VB "programmers" don't really know how to create a Visual Basic application, that is, an executable program that follows the rules that Windows users have come to expect. The result is "programs" that may well have powerful features, but which look amateurish and do not inspire confidence, much less sales.
For example, consider all that goes into a far more complicated application, one that is considered a simple one: Notepad.
When you open Notepad, it creates an initial, blank "document" for you. If you click the File..Save menu command, it behaves like the File..Save As command: it brings up the standard File Open dialog box, since your document has not yet received an actual file name. However, once you have saved a document, from then on File..Save does do a quiet save, because it knows the name of the file. File..Save As still brings up the File Open dialog, even when the document has a file name assigned to it.
In other words, File..Save sometimes behaves like File..Save As before storing the data on the hard disk; and File..Save As has to do the same job as File..Save, once the file has a name.
This is actually a fairly complex bit of behavior; and, remember, nearly every Windows application features it. How can you implement this in Visual Basic? Those three-day classes won't tell you.
Then there's MDI applications...and the new Tabbed applications, each of which uses multiple windows to display different parts of the data, or different data, or different forms of the data...but which need to be kept in sync with the actual data, even when the user makes changes in just one of the windows. (The changes must show up in the other windows, instantly! It can make a programmer's head spin.)
And if you think learning an older version of Visual Basic (4, 5, or 6, say) has prepared you for the new, free incarnation, you're wrong. Not only is much of the basic syntax changed, but if you don't know how to create VB2005 classes, with overloaded procedures, inheritance, and overloaded operators...you are wasting your time.
That's why my Visual Basic classes are given in five days. That gives us enough time to learn, not only Visual Basic syntax and how to use the development environment, but also how to write a real Visual Basic application.
But, there's only one of me, and I won't live long enough to teach everyone in the world in person. Therefore, I am making my Visual Basic knowledge available via this Web site; I will add to it as time permits, and, hopefully, it will be of assistance to those who need to write real Windows applications, and not just calculators.