Visual Basic 2010 Introduction

Visual Basic 2010 is  the latest version of
Visual Basic launched by Microsoft in 2010.
VB2010 is almost similar to Visual Basic
2008,  but it has added many new features. Like Visual Basic
2008 , Visual Basic 2010 is also a full fledged Object-Oriented
Programming(OOP) Language, so it has caught up with other OOP
languages such as C++, Java,C# and others.

However, you don’t have to know OOP to learn
VB2010. In fact, if you are  familiar with Visual Basic
6, you can learn VB2010 effortlessly because the syntax and
interface are similar. Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition is
available free for download from the Microsoft site. Click on
this link Visual Studio to
download Vb2010. After installation, you need to register your copy of Visual Basic 2010 Express, otherwise, it will expire in 30 days.
The registration is free provided you have a Microsoft account.

1.1 The Visual Basic 2010 Integrated Development Environment

The Integrated
Development Environment when you launch VB2010 Express is
shown in the diagram below. The IDE Start Page consists of a
few sections, namely:

• The New
  Project/Open Project section.
• The Recent
  Projects section that shows a list of projects that
  have been created by you recently.
• The Getting
  Started Pane- It provides some helpful tips to quickly
  develop your applications.
• The Latest News
  section- It provides latest online news about Visual Basic
  2010 Express. It will announce new releases and
  updates
• The Properties
  section

1.2 Creating Your First Application

To start creating your first application, you need
to click on New Project. The following VB2010 New Project dialog box
will appear.

The dialog box offers you five types of
projects that you can create. As we are going to learn to
create windows Applications, we will select Windows Forms
Application.

At the bottom of this dialog box, you can
change the default project name WindowsApplication1
to some other name you like, for exampe,
myFirstProgram. After you have renamed the project, click OK
to continue. The following IDE Windows will appear, it is
almost similar to Visual Basic 6. It consists of an empty
form, the toolbox tab and the properties. The layout is
slightly different from vb2008 as the Toolbox is not shown
until you click on the Toolbox
tab.

When you click on the Toolbox tab, the common controls Toolbox
will appear.

Now drag the button control into the form, and change its default
Text Button1 to OK in the properties window, the
word OK will appear on the button in the form, as shown below:

Next, click on the OK button and the code window appears. Enter the
code as follows:

When you run the the program and click on the OK button, a dialog
box will appear and display the “WELCOME TO VISUAL BASIC 2010”
message,as shown below: