your first vb.net
application
it’s time to jump in and start working with vb.net. first, you
need to learn a little bit about the new ide. the new vb.net
ide might look somewhat familiar to you, but there are some
significant changes that make it a more useful environment.
however, these changes can be frustrating to experienced vb
developers because many of the keystrokes have changed, win-dows
have different names, and the debugging tools work dif-ferently.
vb.net is part of visual studio.net (or vs.net),
which finally consolidates all the development languages into
one place: vb.net, c++.net, and c#. you can even create a
single solution, containing multiple projects, in which the indi-vidual
projects are written in separate languages.
the start page
the very first time you start visual studio.net, you are taken
to a screen that allows you to configure the ide. that screen
is the my profile page discussed later in the chapter. after
your first visit to the my profile page, all subsequent starts of
visual studio.net begin with the start page, as shown in
figure 2.1. the start page contains a number of sections, as
indicated by the links along the left side. these sections are
• get started—this option allows you to open a recent
or existing project, or create a new one. no recent
projects are listed on the get started area shown in
figure 2.1. as you create projects in vb.net, this area
will display the four most recently opened projects.
this area also contains links to open an existing
chapter 2
your first vb.net application