Visual Basic is the most widely used programming language for creating Windows applications. Why? It's very easy to learn because it uses keywords that closely resemble the English language, while other programming languages require memorization of commands that bear no resemblance to English.

Another reason for Visual Basic's popularity is its development environment, Visual Basic 2005, which enables you to rapidly build Windows applications. Creating a Windows application ordinarily requires you to write lengthy and complex code. But Visual Basic 2005 relieves you of this task. Instead, it enables you to create the application and its components literally with the click of a button or menu item. It even writes all of the necessary code to get the application started for you. You can view and even fine-tune the code, but it spares you a lot of the grunt work.

While Visual Basic 2005 helps you write a Windows application, you still need to write code and be able to plan your application. This course will show you how. You'll learn the building blocks of programming, including using variables, control structures, and loops. You'll find out how to use the large function library built into Visual Basic 2005, including the .NET Framework, as well as how to write and use your own functions. You'll learn how to use the large and varied library of controls Windows offers. And you'll learn how to access files and handle errors. Since Windows applications are event-driven and everything in Visual Basic 2005 is treated as a programmable object, you'll also learn about event-driven and object-oriented programming, concepts important not just in Visual Basic, but also in other programming languages you may want to learn in the future.

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Syllabus:

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

The best way to learn programming is to write programs. To get started, you need to obtain and install Visual Basic 2005. In our first lesson, you'll learn which of the different editions of Visual Basic 2005 may be right for you, and how to install Visual Basic 2005 on your computer. You'll then create your first Windows application, and learn how a Windows application works.

Friday - Lesson 02

In the first lesson, you were able to create a working Windows application with just a few mouse clicks. In this lesson, you'll find out what Visual Basic 2005 did behind the scenes to create this application. You'll also learn about properties, which are characteristics of an object—such as its size and color—and how to change those properties.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Windows applications are all about events, such as the event that's caused by a user clicking on a button. In today's lesson, you'll learn about event procedures. Later, you'll get your feet wet in Visual Basic by writing your first code.

Friday - Lesson 04

So far we've been focusing on the form, perhaps the most important part of a Windows application's graphical user interface, or GUI. However, a form's primary role is to host other controls that enrich the GUI of Windows applications—menus, toolbars, buttons, text boxes, and list boxes. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to add controls to your form, and how to write code for these controls.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Most computer programs store information, or data. Today you'll learn all about data types, which represent different varieties, such as numeric or text, of data. You'll also learn how to store that information in a variable.

Friday - Lesson 06

As a former professional chess player, I've marveled at the ability of chess computers to play world champions on even terms. The reason the chess computers have this ability is because they can calculate far more quickly and accurately than people can. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use arithmetic operators to harness the computer's calculating ability.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

As your programs become more sophisticated, they'll often branch in two or more directions based on whether a condition is true or false. For example, a calculator first needs to determine whether the user chose addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division before performing the indicated arithmetic. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use comparison and logical operators to determine a user's choice.

Friday - Lesson 08

Once you know the user's choice, you'll want to execute different code based on that choice. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use If and Select Case statements to execute alternative code statements.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

When you were a child, your parents may have told you not to repeat yourself. However, sometimes your code needs to repeat itself. For example, if your application's user enter invalid data, your code may continue to ask users whether they want to retry or quit until they either enter valid data or quit. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use loops, which repeat code execution until a condition is no longer true. Then you'll learn about arrays, which may hold multiple values at one time, and work very well with loops.

Friday - Lesson 10

Many textbooks are several hundred pages long. Imagine how much harder a textbook would be to understand if it consisted of only one very long chapter, rather than being divided into manageable sections? In today's lesson, you'll learn how to similarly divide up your code into separate procedures.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

When I finish writing something for the evening, I close my word-processing program, and maybe even shut down my computer. Of course, the next evening I don't have to start over. What I wrote the previous evening is preserved. However, up until now our programs haven't saved data so that it's available even after the application exits. In this lesson, you'll learn how to write code that reads from and writes to a text file. You'll also learn how to add Open and Save dialog boxes, such as those used in sophisticated programs like Microsoft Word, so you can open a text file to read from it, and save to a text file to write to it.

Friday - Lesson 12

Nobody's perfect, right? Well, your applications won't always run perfectly either. Sometimes they'll stop due to a runtime error, also called an exception. In our final lesson, you'll learn how to prevent and handle exceptions.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Jeffrey Kent.

Jeffrey A. Kent is a Professor of Computer Science, teaching both traditional and online classes. He has taught a number of computer programming languages, including C, C++, Java, and Assembly, but his favorite is Visual Basic. He has authored several computer programming books on Visual Basic, the most recent being Visual Basic 2005 Demystified. He's also an attorney, and has combined both careers by writing applications for law firms.

Requirements:

Visual Basic 2005 (free Express version can be downloaded from Microsoft); Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). Please be sure to install this software on your computer before the course begins. This course is not suitable for Macintosh users.

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