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