You are holding more than just a book. You are holding an idea. No wait, that’s what you get when you hold a philosophy book. In this case, what you also get is software—free software. And it’s all found on the publisher’s web site for this book:
| http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518431/ |
When you download and run the setup program provided on the web site, the following items are added to your system:
A directory structure with all chapter-specific source code and documentation.
A “vsi” file that installs a set of Visual Studio Project templates. Each template creates a new project based on “before” or “after” source code images for most chapters in the book. Once you install this file, you will have the option of accessing chapter-specific projects using the File → New Project menu command in Visual Studio.
A directory of “code snippets” that let you follow along with the action in each chapter’s "Project" section, all without the need to retype every line of code printed in the book.
The installation requires approximately 50 MB of disk space. This appendix discusses the download and installation procedures.
To obtain the software for the book, browse to the book’s web site:
| http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518431/ |
Locate the Source Code link on this page and click it. When prompted, save the download file to your system using the standard file download features of your browser. You can save the file, named Programming Visual Basic 2008.exe, to a temporary area of your system. Once you complete installation, you will no longer need this file, unless you wish to retain it as a backup.
Double-click or run the downloaded Programming Visual Basic 2008.exe file. When prompted, indicate the target directory to use for the installation of all project files. Once the files are extracted, a readme file appears describing the final installation steps.
One of the files installed in the target directory is named Programming Visual Basic 2008 Templates.vsi. Double-click or open this file to install the project templates for the book. The Visual Studio Content Installer window appears, as shown in Figure A-1.
To complete the installation, click the Next button, followed by a click on the Finish button. The next time you run Visual Studio, all of the installed project templates will appear when you use the File → New Project menu command.
Code snippets are installed from within the Visual Studio application. Start Visual Studio, and run the Tools → Code Snippets Manager menu command. The Code Snippets Manager window appears, as shown in Figure A-2.
Click the Add button and browse to the directory where you extracted this book’s downloaded content. Browse within the Code Snippets directory, select the Programming Visual Basic 2008 subdirectory, and click the Select Folder button. When control returns to the Code Snippets Manager form, click the OK button to complete the installation.