Big Changes in Visual Basic .NET

Visual Basic .NET includes a large number of major enhancements since the previous version, Visual Basic 6.0. We will discuss these enhancements throughout this book. Some of these enhancements, which are part of the complete overhaul of Visual Studio (Visual Basic’s parent product), include the following:

• Web Forms— allow you to build Web pages to run in client browsers

• Web Services— run on Web servers to be invoked across the Internet or an intranet

• Server Explorer— provides an easy-to-use interface to server-based components

• Visual Component Designer— assists in creating server-side components

In addition, Visual Basic itself has received a number of much-needed improvements, including

• Inheritance— allows classes to be inherited and reused

• Multithreading— allows you to build free-threaded applications

• Initializers— allow you to set the initial values of variables as they are defined

• Structured Exception Handling— centralizes the handling of program errors

In addition, Visual Studio .NET makes extensive use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML), a markup language that provides a format for describing structured data. Visual Studio .NET also utilizes a standardized Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which is the interface in which you build your applications. This will greatly simplify the porting of your skills from one Visual Studio .NET language to another.