O'Reilly's CD-ROM Helps You Integrate with Visual Studio .NET

When you purchase VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition, you will receive a special CD-ROM version (1.0) of the book's language reference sections. Once installed, this special online version runs as a fully integrated member of the Dynamic Help system inside the IDE, where it complements official Microsoft documentation.

By making VB.NET Language in a Nutshell a part of your on-line development environment, you gain the following benefits:

• continuous access to reference sections of the book as you work in the Visual Studio .NET development environment

• ability to interactively browse the contents of the book through the Visual Studio .NET Help Contents window

• constantly refreshed links to relevant entries in the book that appear in the Help -> Dynamic Help window as you write your Microsoft Visual Basic .NET code

• links to both VB.NET Language in a Nutshell topics as well as Microsoft documentation topics when you use either the Help Search facility or interactive index

• access to the O’Reilly Web site, www.oreilly.com, for additional books and articles on Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework

To preview the features of the on-line version of VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, you might try the following:

1. Tour the TOC: To display the table of contents of VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, first select Help-Contents on the Visual Studio .NET menu. Once the Contents window is open, select Visual Basic on the Filtered by: drop down list. VB.NET Language in a Nutshell is a volume in the O’Reilly Help collection. Double-click on O’Reilly Help. The TOC is sorted by type of language element (e.g., Attributes, Classes, Directions, Functions and so on). A complete alphabetical listing of all elements in the reference is available by selecting Complete Alphabetical Listing at the end of the TOC. As an exercise, find and select the entry for theDim Statement in the TOC.



2. Get dynamic Help while you’re coding: Because VB.NET Language in a Nutshell is fully integrated with Visual Studio .NET, you can use the dynamic Help feature to display relevant links to the book as you code. To enable the dynamic Help feature, select Dynamic Help from the Visual Studio .NET Help menu. As an exercise, open a Visual Basic project, and define a class. As you type the keywords Public Class, links to relevant material will appear in the Dynamic Help window. Links to pages in VB.NET Language in a Nutshell appear under the link group in the Dynamic Help window named O’ Reilly Help.

3. Search for Help on a Visual Basic .NET language element: To search for information in VB.NET Language in a Nutshell on a particular VB.NET language element, select Search from the Visual Studio .NET Help menu. Enter the name of a VB.NET keyword, such as Dim, in the Look for: box of the Search window, and then click on the Search button. In the Search Results window, look for Titles with a Location listed as VB.NET Language in a Nutshell. Double-click on any entry that meets this criterion to see the related pages from VB.NET Language in a Nutshell. As an exercise, find and double-click on the entry in the Search window with the title Dim Statement and with the location VB.NET Language in a Nutshell.



4. Search the Visual Studio .NET Help Index: The Visual Studio .NET Help system includes an integrated index with pointers to all Help files installed in the IDE, including those from VB.NET Language in a Nutshell. To search for index entries related to a VB.NET language element, first select Index from the Visual Studio .NET Help menu. When you enter the name of a keyword or concept in the Look For: box of the Index window, the Help system jumps to the index entry that most closely matches yours. As an exercise, enter the keyword Dim into the Look for: box of the Index window. Double-click on the Dim statement entry and observe the results displayed in the Index Results window. Double-click on the entry whose location name is VB.NET Language in a Nutshell to see the corresponding page from the book.

VB.NET Language in a Nutshell for Visual Studio .NET is an experiment for both O’Reilly and Microsoft, and we want very much to hear your comments. Your feedback will help us decide how to make the product more useful to programmers and whether to extend it to additional titles in the O’Reilly .NET Nutshell series.

Please send your comments to bookquestions@oreilly.com.

If you discover errors in content or encounter any problems in using this product, please report them to bookquestions@oreilly.com.

Updates

If you received the promotional CD from Microsoft Tech-Ed, you may need to follow these steps to activate the installation process:

1. Place the CD in the drive. AutoRun should bring up an Explorer window. If not, use Explorer to browse the CD drive.

2. There are two files: VBNETLang ReadMe.htm and VBNetLanguageInANutshell-10011.9476-msi.

3. Copy both files to hard drive (drag & drop) or cut and paste.

4. Rename VBNetLanguageInANutshell-10011.9476-msi by right clicking on it and selecting Rename. Rename to VBNetLanguageInANutshell.msi.

5. Install by double clicking on VBNetLanguageInANutshell.msi.

6. When installation is complete, delete VBNETLang ReadMe.htm and VBNetLanguageInANutshell.msi from the location saved during step 3.

Known Issues

Customers upgrading from VS.Net 2002 to 2003 should be sure to uninstall the 
plug-ins before uninstalling VS.Net 2002.  

Back to: VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition