Visual Studio Books

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Unleashed

Lars Powers, Mike Snell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Unleashed is a deep dive into the Visual Studio 2005 tool. Specifically, it will provide you with solid guidance and education that will allow you to squeeze the ultimate productivity and use out of the Visual Studio 2005 development environment. This book folds in real-world development experience with detailed information about the IDE to make you more productive and ease transition from other development environments (including prior versions of Visual Studio). This book will also help you increase team collaboration and project visibility with Visual Studio Team Systems and it will give you straight, to-the-point answers to common developer questions about the IDE.

Chapters include:

• Code Viewers, Explorers, and Browsers
• Refactoring Code 8
• Writing ASP .NET Applications
• Defining Standards and Practices
• Introduction to Visual Studio Team System
• Work Item Tracking
• Unit and Load Testing

Visual Studio Hacks: Tips & Tools for Turbocharging the IDE

James Avery

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With start-up templates for projects ranging from Windows applications to web services, and extensive help and on-line documentation, Visual Studio .NET might be mistaken for a tool for unsophisticated users. It's true that most developers soon discover that the basic operation of Visual Studio is fairly self-explanatory; less obvious are some of the suite's more advanced built-in features. Visual Studio .Net includes a wealth of little-used capabilities, is very customizable, has a complete automation model, and much more. On top of its regular feature set, there are hosts of free add-ins, macros, and power toys that can further enhance the functionality of Visual Studio. This book is all about exploring these things, and in doing so, becoming a better and more efficient developer. Developers will learn how to:

• Get the most out of projects and solutions, including getting down and dirty with the undocumented format of project and solution files
• Use these editor features to the fullest, and add additional functionality to the editor through the use of third-party add-ins
• Learn smarter ways to navigate the application and your own source code
• Customize shortcut keys, toolbars, menus, the toolbox, and much more
• Use the debugger successfully not only on your source code, but with T-SQL and scripting languages as well
• Automatically generate code
• Learn how the server can be used to interface with databases, services, and performance counters, as well as WMI
• Use and create Visual Studio add-ins to extend its functionality

Offering valuable tips, tools, and tricks, Visual Studio Hacks takes you far beyond the suite's usual capabilities. You can read this book from cover to cover or, because each hack stands its own, you can feel free to browse and jump to the different sections that interest you most. If there's a prerequisite you need to know about, a cross-reference will guide you to the right hack. If you want to experience the full spectrum of Visual Studio's functionality and flexibility, you'll find the perfect guide for exploration in Visual Studio Hacks. Once the final page is turned, you can confidently say that you've been exposed to everything that Visual Studio .NET is capable of doing.

Visual Studio Tools for Office: Using Visual Basic 2005 with Excel, Word, Outlook, and InfoPath (Microsoft .Net Development Series)

Eric Carter, Eric Lippert

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"With the application development community so focused on the Smart Client revolution, a book that covers VSTO from A to Z is both important and necessary. This book lives up to big expectations. It is thorough, has tons of example code, and covers Office programming in general terms--topics that can be foreign to the seasoned .NET developer who has focused on ASP.NET applications for years. Congratulations to Eric Lippert and Eric Carter for such a valuable work!" --Tim Huckaby, CEO, InterKnowlogy, Microsoft regional director "This book covers in a clear and concise way all of the ins and outs of programming with Visual Studio Tools for Office. Given the authors' exhaustive experiences with this subject, you can't get a more authoritative description of VSTO than this book!" --Paul Vick, technical lead, Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Corporation"Eric and Eric really get it. Professional programmers will love the rich power of Visual Studio and .NET, along with the ability to tap into Office programmability. This book walks you through programming Excel, Word, InfoPath, and Outlook solutions." --Vernon W.Hui, test lead, Microsoft Corporation "This book is an in-depth, expert, and definitive guide to programming using Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005. It is a must-have book for anyone doing Office development." --Siew Moi Khor, programmer/writer, Microsoft Corporation "We don't buy technical books for light reading. We buy them as a resource for developing a solution. This book is an excellent resource for someone getting started with Smart Client development. For example, it is common to hear a comment along the lines of, 'It is easy to manipulate the Task Pane in Office 2003 using VSTO 2005,' but until you see something like the example at the start of Chapter 15, it is hard to put 'easy' into perspective. This is a thorough book that covers everything from calling Office applications from your application, to building applications that are Smart Documents. It allows the traditional Windows developer to really leverage the power of Office 2003." --Bill Sheldon, principal engineer, InterKnowlogy, MVP "Eric Carter and Eric Lippert have been the driving force behind Office development and Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005.The depth of their knowledge and understanding of VSTO and Office is evident in this book. Professional developers architecting enterprise solutions using VSTO 2005 and Office System 2003 now have a new weapon in their technical arsenal." --Paul Stubbs, program manager, Microsoft Corporation "This book is both a learning tool and a reference book, with a richness of tables containing object model objects and their properties, methods, and events. I would recommend it to anyone considering doing Office development using the .NET framework, especially people interested in VSTO programming." --Rufus Littlefield, software design engineer/tester, Microsoft Corporation Visual Studio Tools for Office is both the first and the definitive book on VSTO 2005 programming, written by the inventors of the technology. VSTO is a set of tools that allows professional developers to use the full power of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework to put code behind Excel 2003, Word 2003, Outlook 2003, and InfoPath 2003.V STO provides functionality never before available to the Office developer: data binding and data/view separation, design-time views of Excel and Word documents inside Visual Studio, rich support for Windows Forms controls in a document, the ability to create custom Office task panes, server-side programming support against Office, and much more. Carter and Lippert cover their subject matter with deft insight into the needs of .NET developers learning VSTO. This book *Explains the architecture of Microsoft Office programming and introduces the object models *Teaches the three basic patterns of Office solutions: Office automation executables, Office add-ins, and code behind a document *Explores the ways of customizing Excel, Word, Outlook, and InfoPath, and plumbs the depths of programming with their events and object models *Introduces the VSTO programming model *Teaches how to use Windows Forms in VSTO and how to work with the Actions Pane *Delves into VSTO data programming and server data scenarios *Explores .N ET code security and VSTO deployment Advanced material covers working with XML in Word and Excel, developing COM add-ins for Word and Excel, and creating Outlook add-ins with VSTO. The complete code samples are available on the book's Web page.

Professional VSTO 2005: Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (Programmer to Programmer)

Alvin Bruney

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Professional Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office satisfies the need to write enterprise software based on Office by delivering practical solutions for those seeking to port existing functionality to VSTO. The book focuses on code and implementation, not theory, with code examples presented in both VB and C#.

The book is especially written for enterprise developers - VBA or COM Interop savvy - who need to leverage the power and productivity of VSTO today. .NET developers seeking to explore VSTO as a potential solution will also find ample material that suits their needs.

This book covers VSTO 2005 in detail. The approach focuses on the major components that form the suite with the exception that InfoPath is not covered. All other components benefit from an exploration of the key objects that are most likely to be used in common programming scenarios. This book is organized into chapters that present the building blocks of VSTO first. Microsoft Excel and its Range objects form the cornerstone of range manipulation across the VSTO suite. For that reason, the first few chapters explain these basic concepts. Subsequent chapters use these building blocks as a starting point so it is important to be familiar with these concepts before skipping to the back of the book.

Once you gain a complete understanding of the Excel Range object in Chapters 2 and 3, you can apply that knowledge to the remaining chapters. In fact, Microsoft Word, Charts and Pivot Table manipulation are all based on the Excel Range object. (VSTO contains a potent charting engine second to none. And this book explores every facet of charting.) The obvious benefit of this clever architecture is that it significantly reduces the learning curve for those who wish to adopt this relatively new technology. And this book is designed to show you how to exploit this architecture.

The Book of Visual Studio .NET

Robert Dunaway

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Badly Named, But Very Serious and Very Useful 4 out of 5 stars.
31 of 31 people found this review helpful.

The title, "The Book of Visual Studio .NET," is misleading. The book is not an in-depth guide to using Visual Studio and barely touches on extending and customizing Visual Studio. A better title would have been "A Developer's Accelerated Introduction To .NET." It assumes the reader is a working developer, new to .NET, and moves at a brisk pace. Only one of twelve chapters focuses on the Visual Studio tools although Visual Studio is used throughout to design, code, compile, run, and trouble-shoot examples for nearly every topic. After brief disappointment (I wanted a Visual Studio handbook), I read the book cover to cover and learned something in each chapter after more than two years of heavy reading and significant development effort with .NET. If I taught a course on .NET, this would be my text!

Most of the .NET landscape is explored in the 369 pages - including: Visual Studio, the .NET framework and CLR, VB.NET, Windows forms, web forms, web services, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, and COM interoperability. But C# and C++ are given almost no space.

Design and code samples are numerous and are no longer than needed to demonstrate the essential concepts. You will want to be sitting at your computer with a full deck of .NET available - Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server. The code can be downloaded.

This is probably an ideal book for someone crossing over from the Java world or moving on from older Micsrosoft technologies. If you are quite expert in other OOP technologies but new to .NET, two days with this book will get you started on your first .NET project or prepare you for a .NET job interview.

This is the author's first book; he is an experienced system architect working in .NET and COM. The publisher, No Starch Press, is small and new but headed by one of the Apress (serious books for serious people) founders. Their site suggests a bunch of San Francisco guys willing to put away their Linux and Java for a grudging review of the enemy's (Microsoft's) armored division. But I could still hear one of them say, "Microsoft .NET is not even in use within one hundred miles."

Nothing was too hard and nothing was too easy. Definitely no starch!

Editorial Review:

The Book of Visual Studio .NET surveys each .NET server and related technologies, with a focus on Visual Studio 7 (VS7). Hands-on examples cover building forms, data retrieval, moving to COM+, and implementing web services. Other key issues and solutions include upgrading from Visual Basic, source control services, and remoting.

Enterprise Development with Visual Studio .NET, UML, and MSF

John Erik Hansen, Carsten Thomsen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The content is not only worthy because of Hansen's and Thomsen's thorough explanations but also the playful tone added to the explanations.

— Jean "Caroline" Billingsley, Denver Visual Studio User Group

Microsoft Visual Studio Core Reference Set (Microsoft Professional Editions , So5)

Microsoft Corporation

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

To succeed in today's enterprises, developers require the extraordinary range of tools that come with Microsoft Visual Studio. To tap the full power of these tools, developers need this comprehensive reference set. It contains all five volumes of the Programmer's Guides, one for each major product component, so the answers that professionals need are now close at hand in easy-to-use book form. And because they're from Microsoft, these volumes provide authoritative and complete information straight from the source-- Microsoft developer User Education groups. In addition, this set includes the Microsoft Visual C++(r) 6.0 Programmer's Guide by Beck Zaratian for Microsoft Press. The accompanying CD included with the set contains numerous helpful tools, samples for Microsoft Visual C++ programmers, and an electronic index with sample code and sample projects.

Includes five volumes: Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Programmer's Guide Microsoft Visual Basic(r) 6.0 Programmer's Guide Microsoft Visual InterDev(tm) 6.0 Programmer's Guide Microsoft Visual FoxPro(r) 6.0 Programmer's Guide Microsoft Visual J++(tm) Programmer's Guide

MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (70-305): Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Visual Basic.NET and Visual Studio.NET

Mike Gunderloy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A valuable book with shortcomings 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is a valuable book, it explained topics which were missing in some other books. In the other hand, the previous reviews did not mention some shortcomings in this book. The OOP part of this book is not good. The language in many parts of this book is ambiguous, it lures people to read these parts again and again, but after that the meaning is still not clear, while this repeated reading of such a big book wastes time. The sample code in this book is not available for download, although they are in the CD, but the CD is made in a mean way that the "copy" function is disabled, so this book is not good for busy people.

Editorial Review:

This certification exam measures the ability to develop and implement Web-based applications with Web forms, ASP.NET, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. This exam counts as a core credit toward the new MCAD (Microsoft Certified Application Developer) certification as well as a core credit toward the existing MCSD certification. Readers preparing for this exam find our Training Guide series to be the most successful self-study tool in the market. This book is their one-stop shop because of its teaching methodology, the accompanying ExamGear testing software, and superior Web site support at www.quepublishing.com/certification. The CD features the ExamGear product (test simulation with more than 150 practice questions) and an electronic copy of the book.

Visual Studio.Net All in One Desk Reference for Dummies

Nitin Pandey, Senthil Nathan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Not a Visual Studio .NET book, it's a .Net language book 3 out of 5 stars.
24 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Well, I already have a number of .NET language books, I did not need any more. I enjoy the for dummies books because they start at the low level and work upwards from there. What I was looking for was a book that would tell me how to use Visual Studio.NET to it's maximum potential. Instead, I got 7 mini-books on how to program in each of the languages that Visual Studio offers. The title should be Programming in .NET for Dummies rather than using VS.NET in the title. I can write in any of those languages by using notepad, so this is a very misleading title.
However, I will not give this book an awful rating since it seems to be good at what it does say. Just be careful that you don't buy this thinking you're going to get a good reference on how to use Visual Studio - because this ain't it.

Editorial Review:

Visual Studio .NET All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies is a value-packed, easy-to-use reference that provides broad coverage of Visual Studio .NET tools, languages, and environment for experienced Visual Studio programmers and developers who want to get up to speed rapidly on this missioncritical Microsoft initiative.

Beginning Web Programming using VB.NET and Visual Studio .NET

Daniel Cazzulino, Craig Bowes, Chris Hart, Neil Raybould, Tobin Titus, Mike Clark

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The introduction of .NET has blurred the lines between previously distinct programming disciplines. With so much functionality encapsulated by the .NET Framework class library, some very diverse tasks have gained a common programming interface that makes moving from one to another seem much less daunting. One area in which this change is particularly striking is web development: where ASP was the realm of script programmers, ASP.NET is implemented by a set of classes that enable you to create Internet applications using the same languages that you'd use for Windows desktop programs.

In Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft has taken this idea a stage further: not only does the code look similar, but the GUI looks similar too. Visual Basic .NET's familiar form-based interface is used for the development of web applications as well as for desktop programs. If you want to, you can create a web application without ever seeing a line of HTML code, and you can do so with all the facilities for testing and debugging that Visual Studio .NET provides to programmers of all types.

In this book, we'll take what you already know about creating desktop applications using Visual Basic .NET, and show you how to apply it to the Web. We'll teach you about the different thinking that you have to employ when writing web applications, and also tell you about some of the technologies that can help in the creation of compelling web content. In particular, we'll explore:

- How the Web works: the Internet, HTTP, and the client-server architecture

- Creating dynamic web pages with web forms and web server controls

- Acquiring and displaying data using ADO.NET and Visual Studio .NET components

- Debugging and error handling in ASP.NET applications

- The importance of XML, and particularly its role in web services

- Setting up your web server efficiently and securely

- Assessing the performance of your application, and preparing it for release

Along the way, we'll be building a case study that demonstrates the use of these technologies in practice. That example, like all of the others in the book, is presented in Wrox's tried-and-tested Try It Out format.