My .Net Journal blog posts will be made to the new vbCity blog site from now on.

Here's the link to my new blog site: Mike McIntyre's .NET Journal

RSS feed is:  http://cs.vbcity.com/blogs/mike-mcintyre/rss.aspx

Example:

  ' Create a LINQ query.

        Dim buttonQuery = From control In Me.Controls Where TypeOf (control) Is Button

        ' Create a list of object.

        Dim buttonList = buttonQuery.ToList

        ' Iterate through the objects in buttonList.

        For Each btn As Button In buttonList

            ' Show each button's text property.

            MessageBox.Show(btn.Text)

        Next

My.Computer.FileSystem.RenameFile("C:\OldName.txt", "NewName.txt")

The Silverlight team has Visual Basic How-Do-I videos, and all the code downloads are now equally available in VB and C#.

Silverlight Visual Basic How-Do-I Videos 

At aZ Software we are looking to give our build process a major shot in the arm. 

Do you build enterprise applications – what do they use for build?

For new implementations?

For upgrades?

Do you use MS Build, NAnts?

NAnts with Vincent-Vega?

CruizeControl?

TeamCity?

Others?

Open Source Web Design is a collection of web designs submitted by the community that anyone can download free of charge!

Check it out at:  Open Source Web Design

Relaxed delegate conversion, introduced in Visual Basic 2008, enables you to assign subs and functions to delegates or handlers even when the signatures are not identical. Therefore, binding to delegates becomes consistent with the binding already allowed in method invocations. 

In Visual Basic prior to 2008:

Sub OnClick(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) Handles RunButton.Click
    MessageBox.Show("Visual Basic prior to VB 2008")
End Sub

In Visual Basic 2008 (VB9)

Sub OnClick() Handles RunButton.Click
    MessageBox.Show("Look Mom, no parameters!")
End Sub

Details:  Relaxed Delegate Conversion

Mike McIntyre
www.getdotnetcode.com

Visual Web Gui is an open source product for porting .NET Windows Forms applications to the web. 

It is used to create ASP.NET web applications with a very AJAX like experience - without the AJAX programming hassle.

It may be worth it to you to give it a try. Though it's little rough around the edges at this point, this product can be used today to produce web applications from .NET Windows Forms projects. And - the developer is rapidly improving the product each month.

It's easy to get started and it to produce useful web applications. I've been playing around with it for about a week and have already created two small web applications for IT management.

The process is straight-forward:

1. Download and install the free Visual Web Gui Visual Studio project templates.

2. Create a Visual Web Gui project. This is a Visual Studio Windows Forms project.

3. Build out the Windows Froms application.

4. Compile.

5. Run result in web browser.

6. Deploy to web server.

Visual Web Gui web site:  http://www.visualwebgui.com/

Visual Web Gui at CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/VWGSilverlight

Mike McIntyre

www.getdotnetcode.com

Jaren Parsons of the Microsoft Visual Basic Team created PInvoke Interop Assistant. In a blog announcing the tool he says: “The motivation behind this tool is writing PInvoke is a hard and often tedious task. There are many rules you must obey and many exceptions that must be taken into account.”

Read about the tool and get a link to download it at: Making PInvoke Easy

The list has more than doubled since I first published it here.

Below, in alphabetical order, is a partial listing of Visual Basic 2008 books.  Some have already been published, some will be published over the next several months.

Accelerated VB 2008 (Accelerated)

Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 - Programming Techniques

Beginning VB 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional

Beginning Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Clearly Visual Basic: Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Introduction to Programming Using Visual Basic 2008

LINQ in Action

Mastering Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008: RELOADED

Murach's Visual Basic 2008

Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform

Programming in Visual Basic 2008

Programming Visual Basic 2008: Build .NET 3.5 Applications with Microsoft's Popular RAD Tool for Business

Programming Windows Services with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 2008 in 24 Hours: Complete Starter Kit

Simply Visual Basic 2008

Starting Out With Visual Basic 2008

Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies

Visual Basic 2008 for Windows and Mobile Applications: Introductory

Visual Basic 2008 for Windows, Mobile, Web, Office, and Database Applications: Comprehensive

Visual Basic 2008 How to Program

Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference

Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Mike McIntyre

Get Dot Net Code

Local type inference is an important new concept to grasp as one approaches Visual Basic 2008.  Many new features in VB 2008 are dependent on it. Below is a brief introduction to local type inference followed by a link to a MSDN resource where you can learn more.

Introduction

In Visual Basic 2008 you can get strongly typed local variables without using the 'As' clause to explictly set the variables type.  Here is an example of declaring a strongly typed variable in prior versions of Visual Basic for .NET and assigning it an integer literal:

Dim myInteger As Integer = 10

In Visual Basic 2008 you can get the same result - that is a strongly type variable - like this:

Dim myInteger = 10

The Visual Basic 2008 complier will strongly type the myInteger variable by infering the type from the integer literal.  It analyzes the value assigned to the local variable myInteger  (the integer literal 10), determines it is of type integer, and strongly types myVariable as in integer.

More Information

For more info click -> Local Type Inference

For more VB XNA game code visit:  http://ilovevb.net/Web/

Checkout the downloads section.