Week 1. In Review

Now that week 1 is complete, you have a solid foundation to move forward with writing .NET applications using Visual Studio .NET.

On Day 1, you learned about the .NET Framework and how it fits into the whole vision of .NET, including core services like the common language runtime, garbage collection, just-in-time compilation, and the new Microsoft Intermediate Language. Understanding what .NET can do for you is the first step in moving forward with your 21-day adventure of learning how to use Visual Studio .NET to write applications.

On Day 2, you learned about the features in Visual Studio .NET that make your life as a developer better than ever. You learned about the many windows available to you, how to use Dynamic Help in the IDE as you're coding, and how to generate help files for your applications without much effort. You also saw the various project templates that are available to you when developing applications using Visual Studio .NET.

On Day 3, you learned how Windows Forms applications are written, and how to tackle the new event model in .NET. Using the features in Visual Studio .NET, you learned that rapid application development has never been more rapid when writing Visual Studio .NET applications.

Day 4 introduced you to the new built-in Windows Installer features of Visual Studio .NET. By creating deployment applications, you learned how easy it is to distribute professional, robust, and customized deployment solutions using Visual Studio .NET.

On Day 5, you learned how to write ASP.NET applications. Like creating applications for the desktop, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET gives you a simple drag-and-drop design time interface for creating rich interfaces for the browser. You learned that ASP.NET applications share the same event model as controls on Windows Forms, and you learned how to use code behind to respond to user events using Visual Studio .NET.

Day 6 built on the techniques you learned about on Day 4: using the Windows Installer technology on Visual Studio .NET to deploy Web-based applications. You also learned how Web applications could be deployed using XCopy deployment and the Copy Web tools in Visual Studio .NET.

Your week wrapped up with a whole day about exception handling and debugging. Using the extensive debugging tools in Visual Studio .NET, Day 7 taught you how to use debugging to help avoid application errors in the future. In addition, if errors do crop up, you learned how to implement structured exception handling in Visual Basic .NET and C# to gracefully handle any errors that occur in your applications.