AS A TOOL FOR DEVELOPERS, Visual Studio stands head and shoulders about its competition. The team responsible for developing Visual Studio has always put the productivity of people who code for a living at the top of their priority list. This version continues this tradition. Visual Studio always incorporates the latest advances in Microsoft's premier programming languages (Visual Basic and C#), as well as adding little tidbits of functionality that are a boon to coders. But at a higher level, Visual Studio 2017 embraces open-source, mobile development, and cloud computing in a variety of ways. Azure is continually introducing new features and products and Visual Studio 2017 integrates seamlessly with them. While, in theory, it is possible to create any .NET application using tools as simple as Notepad and a command-line window, the typical developer would never think to do so. Visual Studio 2017, as was the case with its predecessors, includes a host of improvements and features that are aimed at making the life of a developer easier.
Visual Studio 2017 is an enormous product no matter which way you look at it. It can be intimidating to newcomers and difficult for even experienced .NET developers to find what they need. And that's where this book comes in. Professional Visual Studio 2017 looks at every major aspect of this developer tool, showing you how to harness each feature and offering advice about how best to utilize the various components effectively. It shows you the building blocks that make up Visual Studio 2017, breaking the user interface down into manageable chunks for you to understand. It then expands on each of these components with additional details about exactly how they work, both in isolation and in conjunction with other parts of Visual Studio 2017, along with tools that are not included in the out-of-the-box product, to make your development efforts even more efficient.
Professional Visual Studio 2017 is for developers who are new to Visual Studio as well as those programmers who have some experience but want to learn about features they may have previously overlooked.
Even if you are familiar with the way previous versions of Visual Studio worked, you may want to at least skim over Part I. These chapters deal with the basic constructs that make up the user interface. The biggest changes to the building blocks are in the installation process. It is more granular, meaning that you install only what you need and if you don't install a component initially, the installer is only a click or two away. But there are some little additions in functionality, so while you can get by without Part I, some of the changes in Visual Studio 2017 can make you a more efficient developer. And, after all, that's what you're looking to get out of this book.
If you're just starting out, you'll greatly benefit from the first part, where basic concepts are explained and you're introduced to the user interface and how to customize it to suit your own style.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 is arguably the most advanced integrated development environment (IDE) available for programmers today. It is based on a long history of programming languages and interfaces and has been influenced by many different variations on the theme of development environments.
Visual Studio 2017 does not represent a major departure from recent versions. Still, regardless of the type of application you're creating, there are tweaks that have been made—some small, some less so (.NET Core, for example). Familiarity with the changes helps you perform your job better. For this reason, as well as to help newcomers to Visual Studio, this book covers the breadth of the product. Along the way, you will become more familiar and comfortable with the interface.
Visual Studio 2017 comes in several versions: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. The majority of this book deals with the Professional Edition of Visual Studio 2017, but some chapters utilize features found only in the Enterprise edition. If you haven't used this edition before, read through Chapters 38 and 39 for an overview of the features it offers over and above the Professional Edition.
This book is divided into 11 parts:
Though this breakdown of the Visual Studio feature set provides the most logical and easily understood set of topics, you may need to look for specific functions that will aid you in a particular activity. To address this need, references to appropriate chapters are provided whenever a feature is covered in more detail elsewhere in the book.
As Visual Studio has grown over the years, the size of earlier versions of this book had grown to the point where it was unwieldy. And there were even more features with Visual Studio 2017. So to avoid a book whose size would be pushing 2,000 pages, we took a number of the chapters from earlier editions of Visual Studio and put them into an online archive. These chapters contain features that have not been changed or enhanced in Visual Studio 2017. As such, the instructions found therein will apply, in general, if you're trying to use them in Visual Studio 2017. You can find the online archive on www.wrox.com
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To use this book effectively, you'll need only one additional item — Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Professional Edition. With this software installed and the information found in this book, you'll be able to get a handle on how to use Visual Studio 2017 effectively in a very short period of time. In order to be able to follow along with all of the examples in the book, you'll want to be sure to install the following workloads during your Visual Studio 2017 installation (as discussed in Chapter 1):
This book assumes that you are familiar with the traditional programming model, and it uses both the C# and Visual Basic (VB) languages to illustrate features within Visual Studio 2017. In addition, it is assumed that you can understand the code listings without an explanation of basic programming concepts in either language. If you're new to programming and want to learn Visual Basic, please take a look at Beginning Visual Basic 2015 by Bryan Newsome. Similarly, if you are after a great book on C#, track down Beginning C# 6 Programming with Visual Studio 2015 by Benjamin Perkins, Jacob Vibe Hammer, and Jon D. Reid.
Some chapters discuss additional products and tools that work in conjunction with Visual Studio. The following are all available to download either on a trial basis or for free:
To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what's happening, we've used a number of conventions throughout the book.
As for styles in the text:
persistence.properties
.We use a monofont type for code examples.
We use bold to emphasize code that is particularly important in the present context or to show changes from a previous code snippet.
As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany the book. All the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com.
You can also search for the book at www.wrox.com
by ISBN (the ISBN for this book is 978-1-119-40458-3) to find the code. And a complete list of code downloads for all current Wrox books is available at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx.
Alternately, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx
to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.
Most of the code on www.wrox.com
is compressed in a .ZIP, .RAR archive, or similar archive format appropriate to the platform. Once you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool.
We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata you may save another reader hours of frustration and at the same time you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.
To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com
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If you don't spot “your” error on the Errata page, click the Errata Form link and complete the form to send us the error you have found. We'll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book's errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.
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