[...]... enjoyable skill 14 Part I: The Basics of Visual Basic Express Something Strange Happened in Orlando Visual Basic, VB NET, and now Visual Basic Express — all these versions of Microsoft’s Basic language can be confusing Before you get started writing programs with VB Express, you may find it helpful to understand why Visual Basic Express was even created After all, Visual Basic NET already existed, so... Go from Here 9 Part I: The Basics of Visual Basic Express .11 Chapter 1: What It’s All About: Visual Basic Express Takes a Bow 13 Something Strange Happened in Orlando 14 Visual Basic through the years 14 Visual Basic today 15 What Does Visual Basic Express Have to Offer? 15 Defaults that serve a purpose .16 The Express initiatives 16 Finding... also find this searchable appendix useful If you want to quickly find out, for example, how to change a property of Form1 from within Form2, search the dictionary and you get your answer 7 8 Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies Every line of code that you see in this book is also available for download from the For Dummies Web site Take advantage of this handy electronic version of the code... on Visual Basic Express s fundamental tools, as well as some important terms and concepts, turn to Part I If you’re looking for the answer to a specific problem, check the index or the table of contents and then just turn directly to the appropriate section I hope you find programming with VB Express as useful, and as much fun, as I do 9 10 Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies Part I The Basics... code for all the examples in this book is downloadable from this book’s Web site at: www .dummies. com/go/visualbasic200 5express The following sections give you a brief description of the book’s five main parts Part I: The Basics of Visual Basic Express This part of the book introduces VB Express, explaining its purposes, elementary features, and why it exists in the first place After all, Visual Basic. .. imagine who thinks that this is information a beginner needs to know, much less believes that a beginner could possibly understand I understand it, but I’ve written 36 computer books And there are plenty of Help entries in VB Express that I 2 Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies don’t understand To be fair, some Help entries have apparently been rewritten for the VB Express novice — and they’re... Part I The Basics of Visual Basic Express V In this part isual Basic Express is likely to remain for some time the only computer programming language for beginners, hobbyists, and small-business people Part I introduces you to this new, streamlined version of the famous Visual Basic language You find out why VB Express was created — the audience Microsoft expects and its goals for the language You... don’t want lots of theory or extraneous details You just want to get the programming jobs done How This Book Is Organized The overall goal of Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies is to provide an enjoyable and understandable guide for the Visual Basic Express programmer This book will be accessible to developers and programmers with little or no programming experience The book is divided into... First Look 19 Creating a user interface helps organize your project 20 Programming for the Web 21 Chapter 2: Up and Running 23 Finding Resources from Microsoft .23 Building a Basic VB Program 24 xiv Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition For Dummies Expanding Your Program .28 Frightening Yourself with the “Starter” Kits ... wizard, or using a template Because VB Express is so huge, you can easily overlook the many shortcuts it contains I’ve been on the betas for VB for about 14 years now, and I was on the VB Express technical beta from its start I’ve also written many books on Visual Basic All modesty aside, I do know Visual Basic well I’ve been exploring VB NET several hours a day for five years — since its debut in July . alt="" by Richard Mansfield Visual Basic ® 2005 Express Edition FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_597051 ffirs.qxd 10/20/05 1:17 PM Page iii Visual Basic ® 2005 Express Edition FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_597051 ffirs.qxd. Page ii by Richard Mansfield Visual Basic ® 2005 Express Edition FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_597051 ffirs.qxd 10/20/05 1:17 PM Page iii Visual Basic ® 2005 Express Edition For Dummies ® Published by Wiley. Reference For Dummies, CSS Web Design For Dummies, Visual Basic .NET Weekend Crash Course, Visual Basic .NET Database Programming For Dummies, Visual Basic .NET All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies,