Fully updated for Windows 8 support, .NET 4.5, and Windows Phone development, this is the most comprehensive, practical reference to modern programming with Visual Basic 2012. Written by Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, a long-time leader of the global VB community, this book illuminates the core of the VB language and demonstrates its effective use in many current programming scenarios. Del Sole covers both Visual Basic 2012 Professional Edition for professional developers and the Express Edition for hobbyists, novices, and students. Writing for VB programmers at all levels of experience, he walks through using VB 2012 for data access, Windows desktop/Windows Phone user interface development, networking, communication, and much more. For those moving from structured languages—including VB 6—Del Sole offers detailed guidance on building effective object-oriented code. He also demonstrates how to make the most of Microsoft’s updated .NET 4.5 platform to write more robust and powerful software. Detailed information on how to… ¿ Understand the Visual Studio 2012 IDE, .NET Framework 4.5, and the anatomy of a VB 2012 application ¿ Debug VB applications and implement error handling and exceptions ¿ Build efficient object-oriented software with classes, objects, namespaces, and inheritance ¿ Work with advanced object-oriented features, including interfaces, generics, delegates, events, and collections ¿ Access data with LINQ—including LINQ to Objects, SQL, DataSets, Entities, XML, and Parallel LINQ ¿ Build modern Windows applications with WPF ¿ Develop web-centric applications using ASP.NET, Silverlight 5, and Windows Azure Services cloud computing ¿ Use advanced .NET 4.5 platform capabilities, including asynchronous programming, multithreading, parallel programming ¿ Build apps for Windows Phone ¿ Test code with unit tests, TDD, and code contracts ¿ Deploy apps efficiently with InstallShield for Visual Studio and ClickOnce

Table of Contents:
Part I Learning the Basics of VB 1 Introducing the .NET Framework 4.5     1 2 Getting Started with the Visual Studio 2012 IDE     11 3 The Anatomy of a Visual Basic Project     63 4 Data Types and Expressions     89 5 Debugging Visual Basic 2012 Applications    179 6 Handling Errors and Exceptions     207 Part II Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic 2012 7 Class Fundamentals     225 8 Managing an Object’s Lifetime     269 9 Organizing Types Within Namespaces     283 10 Modules    301 11 Structures and Enumerations     305 12 Inheritance     323 13 Interfaces     347 14 Generics and Nullable Types     367 15 Delegates and Events     379 16 Working with Collections and Iterators     393 17 Creating Objects: Visual Tools and Portable Libraries     423 Part III Advanced Language Features 18 Manipulating Files and Streams    453 19 The My Namespace     477 20 Advanced Language Features    511 Part IV Data Access with ADO.NET and LINQ 21 Introducing ADO.NET and DataSets    539 22 Introducing LINQ     549 23 LINQ to Objects    557 24 LINQ to SQL     587 25 LINQ to DataSets     621 26 Introducing ADO.NET Entity Framework     629 27 Manipulating XML Documents with LINQ and XML Literals     671 Part V Building Windows Desktop Applications 28 Creating WPF Applications    693 29 WPF Common Controls     725 30 Brushes, Styles, Templates, and Animations in WPF     757 31 Manipulating Media and Documents     793 32 Introducing Data-Binding     811 33 Localizing Applications     841 Part VI Building Web Applications 34 Building ASP.NET Web Applications     851 35 Publishing ASP.NET Web Applications    883 36 Building Rich Internet Applications with Silverlight 5     893 37 Building and Deploying Applications for Windows Azure     929 38 Building Apps for Windows Phone 7.5     955 Part VII Networking and Exposing Data Through Networks 39 Creating and Consuming WCF Services     991 40 Implementing and Consuming WCF Data Services     1013 Part VIII Advanced .NET Framework with VB 2012 41 Serialization    1035 42 Processes and Multithreading     1057 43 Parallel Programming and Parallel LINQ     1069 44 Asynchronous Programming     1103 45 Working with Assemblies     1143 46 Reflection     1157 47 Coding Attributes     1181 48 Platform Invokes and Interoperability with the COM Architecture     1191 49 Documenting the Source Code with XML Comments     1207 Part IX Applications Deployment 50 Understanding the Global Assembly Cache     1221 51 Setup and Deployment Projects with InstallShield for Visual Studio     1229 52 Deploying Applications with ClickOnce     1245 Part X Mastering the Visual Studio 2012 IDE 53 Advanced IDE Features     1261 54 Introducing the Visual Studio Extensibility     1287 55 Advanced Analysis Tools     1309 56 Testing Code with Unit Tests, Test-Driven Development, and Code Contracts    1337 Appendix A Useful Resources and Tools for Visual Basic     1357 Index     1361