Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference E-Book

Rod Stephens

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1247

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The comprehensive guide to Visual Basic 2012 Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) is the most popular programming language in the world, with millions of lines of code used in businesses and applications of all types and sizes. In this edition of the bestselling Wrox guide, Visual Basic expert Rod Stephens offers novice and experienced developers a comprehensive tutorial and reference to Visual Basic 2012. This latest edition introduces major changes to the Visual Studio development platform, including support for developing mobile applications that can take advantage of the Windows 8 operating system. * This new edition includes information on developing Win8-compatible Metro applications using pre-loaded templates * Explores the new design features and support for WPF designers * Explains how to develop Windows smartphone apps * Covers new VB language features such as Asynch and Await Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference is the programmer's go-to reference for the 2012 edition of Visual Basic.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Part I: IDE

Chapter 1: Introduction To The IDE

Introducing the IDE

Different IDE Appearances

IDE Configurations

Projects and Solutions

Starting the IDE

Creating a Project

Saving a Project

Summary

Chapter 2: Menus, Toolbars, and Windows

IDE Tools

Menus

Toolbars

Secondary Windows

Summary

Chapter 3: Windows Forms Designer

Introducing Windows Forms Designer

Setting Designer Options

Adding Controls

Selecting Controls

Copying Controls

Moving and Sizing Controls

Arranging Controls

Setting Properties

Adding Code to Controls

Summary

Chapter 4: WPF Designer

Introducing WPF Designer

Editor Weaknesses

Recognizing Designer Windows

Adding Controls

Selecting Controls

Moving and Sizing Controls

Setting Properties

Setting Group Properties

Adding Code to Controls

Summary

Chapter 5: Visual Basic Code Editor

Editing Code

Margin Icons

Outlining

Tooltips

IntelliSense

Code Coloring and Highlighting

Code Snippets

Architectural Tools

The Code Editor at Run Time

Summary

Chapter 6: Debugging

Debugging and Testing

The Debug Menu

The Debug ⇒ Windows Submenu

The Breakpoints Window

The Command and Immediate Windows

Summary

Part II: Getting Started

Chapter 7: Selecting Windows Forms Controls

Controls

Controls Overview

Choosing Controls

Third-Party Controls

Summary

Chapter 8: Using Windows Forms Controls

Using Controls and Components

Controls and Components

Creating Controls

Properties

Methods

Events

Summary

Chapter 9: Windows Forms

Using Forms

Transparency

About, Splash, and Login Forms

Mouse Cursors

Icons

Properties Adopted by Child Controls

Property Reset Methods

Overriding WndProc

MRU Lists

Dialog Boxes

Wizards

Summary

Chapter 10: Selecting WPF Controls

WPF Controls and Code

Controls Overview

Containing and Arranging Controls

Making Selections

Entering Data

Displaying Data

Providing Feedback

Initiating Action

Presenting Graphics and Media

Providing Navigation

Managing Documents

Digital Ink

Summary

Chapter 11: Using Wpf Controls

WPF Controls

WPF Concepts

WPF in the IDE

XAML Features

Procedural WPF

Documents

Summary

Chapter 12: WPF Windows

Using WPF Windows

Window Applications

Page Applications

Summary

Chapter 13: Program and Module Structure

Solutions and Projects

Hidden Files

Code File Structure

Typographic Code Elements

Summary

Chapter 14: Data Types, Variables, and Constants

Variables

Data Types

Type Characters

Data Type Conversion

Variable Declarations

Initializing Collections

Option Explicit and Option Strict

Scope

Parameter Declarations

Property Procedures

Enumerated Data Types

Anonymous Types

Nullable Types

Constants

Delegates

Naming Conventions

Summary

Chapter 15: Operators

Understanding Operators

Arithmetic Operators

Concatenation Operators

Comparison Operators

Logical Operators

Bitwise Operators

Operator Precedence

Assignment Operators

The StringBuilder Class

Date and TimeSpan Operations

Operator Overloading

Summary

Chapter 16: Subroutines and Functions

Managing Code

Subroutines

Functions

Property Procedures

Extension Methods

Lambda Functions

Relaxed Delegates

Asynchronous Methods

Summary

Chapter 17: Program Control Statements

Controlling Programs

Decision Statements

Looping Statements

Summary

Chapter 18: Error Handling

The Struggle for Perfection

Bugs versus Unplanned Conditions

Structured Error Handling

Debugging

Summary

Chapter 19: Database Controls and Objects

Data Sources

Automatically Connecting to Data

Automatically Created Objects

Other Data Objects

Data Overview

Connection Objects

Transaction Objects

Data Adapters

Command Objects

DataView

DataRowView

Simple Data Binding

CurrencyManager

Complex Data Binding

Summary

Chapter 20: LINQ

The Many Faces of LINQ

Introduction to LINQ

Basic LINQ Query Syntax

Advanced LINQ Query Syntax

LINQ Functions

LINQ Extension Methods

LINQ to Objects

LINQ to XML

LINQ into XML

LINQ out of XML

LINQ to ADO.NET

PLINQ

Summary

Chapter 21: Metro-Style Applications

Building Metro-Style Applications

Starting a New Project

Special Image Files

Building MetroBones

Testing

Summary

Part III: Object-Oriented Programming

Chapter 22: OOP Concepts

Introducing OOP

Classes

Encapsulation

Inheritance

Polymorphism

Method Overloading

Extension Methods

Summary

Chapter 23: Classes and Structures

Packaging Data

Classes

Structures

Class Instantiation Details

Structure Instantiation Details

Garbage Collection

Constants, Properties, and Methods

Events

Summary

Chapter 24: Namespaces

Handling Name Conflicts

The Imports Statement

The Root Namespace

Making Namespaces

Classes, Structures, and Modules

Resolving Namespaces

Summary

Chapter 25: Collection Classes

Grouping Data

What Is a Collection?

Arrays

Collections

Dictionaries

CollectionsUtil

Stacks and Queues

Generics

Collection Initializers

Iterators

Summary

Chapter 26: Generics

Class Creators

Advantages of Generics

Defining Generics

Instantiating Generic Classes

Generic Collection Classes

Generic Methods

Generics and Extension Methods

Summary

Part IV: Interacting With The Environment

Chapter 27: Printing

Printing Concepts

Basic Printing

Drawing Basics

A Booklet Example

Summary

Chapter 28: Configuration and Resources

The Need for Configuration

My

Environment

Registry

Configuration Files

Resource Files

Application

Summary

Chapter 29: Streams

Stream Concepts

Stream

FileStream

MemoryStream

BinaryReader and BinaryWriter

TextReader and TextWriter

StringReader and StringWriter

StreamReader and StreamWriter

OpenText, CreateText, and AppendText

Custom Stream Classes

Summary

Chapter 30: Filesystem Objects

Programming Approaches

Permissions

Visual Basic Methods

.NET Framework Classes

My.Computer.FileSystem

My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories

Summary

Appendices

Appendix A: Useful Control Properties, Methods, and Events

Appendix B: Variable Declarations and Data Types

Appendix C: Operators

Appendix D: Subroutine and Function Declarations

Appendix E: Control Statements

Appendix F: Error Handling

Appendix G: Windows Forms Controls and Components

Appendix H: WPF Controls

Appendix I: Visual Basic Power Packs

Appendix J: Form Objects

Appendix K: Classes and Structures

Appendix L: LINQ

Appendix M: Generics

Appendix N: Graphics

Appendix O: Useful Exception Classes

Appendix P: Date And Time Format Specifiers

Appendix Q: Other Format Specifiers

Appendix R: The Application Class

Appendix S: The My Namespace

Appendix T: Streams

Appendix U: Filesystem Classes

Appendix V: Visual Studio Versions

Introduction

Part I

IDE

CHAPTER 1

: Introduction to the IDE

CHAPTER 2

: Menus, Toolbars, and Windows

CHAPTER 3

: Windows Forms Designer

CHAPTER 4

: WPF Designer

CHAPTER 5

: Visual Basic Code Editor

CHAPTER 6

: Debugging

Chapter 1

Introduction to the IDE

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER

Configuring the Visual Studio IDE for Visual Basic development

Understanding projects and solutions

Creating a simple project

Copying solutions

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

There are no code downloads for this chapter.

INTRODUCING THE IDE

The chapters in the first part of this book describe the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). They explain the most important windows, menus, and toolbars that make up the environment, and show how to customize them to suit your needs. They explain some of the tools that provide help while you are writing Visual Basic applications and how to use the IDE to debug programs.

Even if you are an experienced Visual Basic programmer, you should at least skim this material. The IDE is extremely complex and provides hundreds (if not thousands) of commands, menus, toolbars, windows, context menus, and other tools for editing, running, and debugging Visual Basic projects.

Even after you’ve read these chapters, you should periodically spend some time wandering through the IDE to see what you’ve missed. Every month or so, spend a few minutes exploring little-used menus and right-clicking things to see what their context menus contain. As you become a more proficient Visual Basic programmer, you will find uses for tools that you may have dismissed or not understood before.

This chapter explains how to get started using the IDE. It tells how to configure the IDE for different kinds of development. It explains Visual Basic projects and solutions, and shows how to create, run, and save new projects. This chapter is mostly an introduction to the chapters that follow. The other chapters in this part of the book provide much more detail about particular tasks, such as using the IDE’s menus, customizing menus and toolbars, and using the Windows Forms Designer to build forms.

DIFFERENT IDE APPEARANCES

Before you start reading about the IDE and viewing screen shots, it’s important to understand that the Visual Studio IDE is extremely customizable. You can move, hide, or modify the menus, toolbars, and windows; create your own toolbars; dock, undock, or rearrange the toolbars and windows; and change the behavior of the built-in text editors (change their indentation, colors for different kinds of text, and so forth).

NOTE

These chapters describe the basic Visual Studio development environment as it is initially installed. After you’ve moved things around to suit your needs, your IDE may look nothing like the pictures in this book. If a figure doesn’t look exactly like what you see on your computer, don’t worry too much about it.

To avoid confusion, you should probably not customize the IDE’s basic menus and toolbars too much. Removing the help commands from the Help menu and adding them to the Edit menu will only cause confusion later. Moving or removing commands will also make it more difficult to follow the examples in this and other books, and will make it more difficult to follow instructions given by others who might be able to help you when you have problems.

Instead of making drastic changes to the default menus and toolbars, hide the menus and toolbars that you don’t want and create new customized toolbars to suit your needs. Then you can find the original standard toolbars if you decide you need them later.

The screens shown in this book may not look exactly like the ones on your system for several other reasons as well. Visual Studio looks different on different operating systems. The figures in this book were taken on a computer running Windows 8 so they display the Windows 8 look and feel. Additionally, some commands may not behave exactly the same way on different operating systems.

Visual Studio will also look different depending on which version you have installed. The free Visual Basic 2012 Express Edition product has fewer tools than other editions such as the high-end Team Suite. The figures in this book were captured while using Team Suite, so if you have another version, you may not see all of the tools shown here. Menu items, toolbars, and other details may also be slightly different for different versions. Usually you can find moved items with a little digging through the menus and customizations.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

You can learn about Visual Studio’s free Express editions at http://www.microsoft.com/express. Learn about Visual Basic in general at the Visual Basic homepage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic.

Finally, you may be using different configuration settings from the ones used while writing this book. You can configure Visual Studio to use settings customized for developing projects using Visual Basic, C#, web tools, and other technologies. This book assumes your installation is configured for Visual Basic development, and the screen shots may look different if you have selected a different configuration. The following section says more about different IDE configurations and tells how you can select a particular configuration.

IDE CONFIGURATIONS

When you install it, Visual Studio asks you what kinds of development settings you want to use. The most obvious choice for a Visual Basic developer is Visual Basic Development Settings. This choice customizes Visual Studio to work more easily with Visual Basic, and is a good selection if you will focus on Visual Basic development.

Another reasonable choice is General Development Settings. This option makes Visual Studio behave more like Visual Studio 2003. It’s a good choice if you’re used to Visual Studio 2003, or if you expect to use other Visual Studio languages, such as C#, somewhat regularly because these settings are fairly effective for C# development and Visual Basic development.

This book assumes that you have configured Visual Studio for Visual Basic development. If you have chosen a different configuration, some of the figures in this book may look different from what you see on your screen. Some of the menu items available may be slightly different, or may appear in a different order. Usually, the items are available somewhere, but you may have to search a bit to find them.

If you later decide that you want to switch configurations, open the Tools menu and select Import and Export Settings to display the Import and Export Settings Wizard. Select the Reset All Settings option button and click Next. On the second page, tell the wizard whether to save your current settings and click Next. On the wizard’s final page (shown in Figure 1-1), select the type of configuration you want and click Finish. When the wizard is done, click Close.

FIGURE 1-1: Use the Tools menu’s Import and Export Settings command to change the Visual Studio configuration.

PROJECTS AND SOLUTIONS

Visual Studio groups files into projects and solutions. A project is a group of files that produces some specific output. This output may take many forms such as a compiled executable program, a dynamic-link library (DLL) of classes for use by other projects, or a control library for use on other Windows forms.

A solution is a group of one or more projects that should be managed together. For example, suppose that you are building a server application that provides access to your customer order database. You are also building a client program that each of your sales representatives will use to query the server application. Because these two projects are closely related, it might make sense to manage them in a single solution. When you open the solution, you get instant access to all the files in both projects.

Both projects and solutions can include associated files that are useful for building the application but that do not become part of a final compiled product. For example, a project might include the application’s proposal and architecture documents. These are not included in the compiled code, but it can be useful to associate them with the project so they are easy to find, open, and edit while you are working on the project.

When you open the project, Visual Studio lists those documents along with the program files. If you double-click one of these documents, Visual Studio opens the file using an appropriate application. For example, if you double-click a file with a .doc, .docm, or .docx extension, Visual Studio normally opens it with Microsoft Word.

To associate one of these files with a project or solution, right-click the project file at the top of the Solution Explorer (more on the Solution Explorer shortly). In the context menu that appears, select the Add command’s New Item entry, and use the resulting dialog box to select the file you want to add.

CUT OUT CLUTTER

You can add any file to a project or solution, but it’s not a good idea to cram dozens of unrelated files into the same project. Although you may sometimes want to refer to an unrelated file while working on a project, the extra clutter brings additional chances for confusion. It will be less confusing to shrink the Visual Basic IDE to an icon and open the file using an external editor such as Word or WordPad. If you won’t use a file very often with the project, don’t add it.

STARTING THE IDE

When you launch Visual Studio, it initially displays the Start Page shown in Figure 1-2 by default. The Start Page’s Recent Projects section lists projects that you have worked on recently and provides links that let you open an existing project or website, or create a new project or website. The Get Started tab contains links to help topics that may be useful to beginners.

FIGURE 1-2: By default, Visual Studio initially displays the Start Page.

Click the Guidance and Resources tab to see general development topics such as a development overview, information about managing source code, and information about unit testing.

Click the Latest News tab to see an RSS feed listing current articles and stories about Visual Studio development. To change the feed, simply enter a new URL in the tab’s text box.

Use the links on the left of the Start Page to open or create new projects. Click New Project to start a new project. Click Open Project to browse for a project to open. Click one of the Recent Project links to quickly open a project that you have recently edited.

Instead of displaying the Start Page, Visual Studio can take one of several other actions when it starts. To change the startup action, open the Tools menu and select Options. Then select the Show All Settings check box at the bottom of the dialog box so you can see all of the options and open the Environment folder’s Startup item. In the At Startup drop-down box, you can select one of the following options:

Open Home Page

Load Last Loaded Solution

Show Open Project Dialog Box

Show New Project Dialog Box

Show Empty Environment

Show Start Page

Pick one and click OK.

CREATING A PROJECT

After you open Visual Studio, you can use the Start Page’s New Project link or the File menu’s New Project command to open the New Project dialog box shown in Figure 1-3.

FIGURE 1-3: The New Project dialog box lets you start a new project.

Use the Templates tree view on the left to select the project category that you want. Then select a specific project type on the right. In Figure 1-3, the Windows Forms Application project type is selected. Enter a name for the new project in the text box at the bottom.

After you fill in the new project’s information, click OK to create the project.

NOTE

Visual Studio initially creates the project in a temporary directory. If you close the project without saving it, it is discarded.

Figure 1-4 shows the IDE immediately after starting a new Windows Forms Application project. Remember that the IDE is extremely configurable, so it may not look much like Figure 1-4 after you have rearranged things to your liking (and I’ve arranged things to my liking here).

FIGURE 1-4: Initially a new project looks more or less like this.

The key pieces of the IDE are labeled with numbers in Figure 1-4. The following list briefly describes each of these pieces:

1. Menus — The menus contain standard Visual Studio commands. These generally manipulate the current solution and the modules it contains, although you can customize the menus as needed. Visual Studio changes the menus and their contents depending on the object you currently have selected. In Figure 1-4, a Form Designer (marked with the number 4) is open so the IDE is displaying the menus for editing forms.

2. Toolbars — Toolbars contain tools that you can use to perform frequently needed actions. The same commands may be available in menus, but they are easier and faster to use in toolbars. The IDE defines several standard toolbars such as Formatting, Debug, and Image Editor. You can also build your own custom toolbars to hold your favorite tools. Visual Studio changes the toolbars displayed to match the object you currently have selected.

3. Toolbox — The Toolbox contains tools appropriate for the item that you currently have selected and for the project type that you are working on. In Figure 1-4, a Form Designer is selected in a Windows Forms application so the Toolbox contains tools appropriate for a Form Designer. These include Windows Forms controls and components, plus tools in the other Toolbox tabs.

4. Form Designer — A Form Designer lets you modify the graphical design of a form. Select a control tool from the Toolbox, and click and drag to place an instance of the control on the form. Use the Properties window (marked with the number 6) to change the new control’s properties. In Figure 1-4, no control is selected, so the Properties window shows the form’s properties rather than a control’s.

5. Solution Explorer — The Solution Explorer lets you manage the files associated with the current solution. For example, in Figure 1-4, you could select Form1.vb in the Project Explorer and then click the View Code button (the second icon from the right at the top of the Solution Explorer) to open the form’s code editor. You can also right-click an object in the Solution Explorer to get a list of appropriate commands for that object.

6. Properties — The Properties window lets you change an object’s properties at design time. When you select an object in a Form Designer or in the Solution Explorer, the Properties window displays that object’s properties. To change a property’s value, simply click the property and enter the new value.

7. Error List — The Error List window shows errors and warnings in the current project. For example, if a program uses a variable that is not declared, this list will say so.

If you look at the bottom of Figure 1-4, you’ll notice that the Error List window has a series of tabs. The Task List tab displays items flagged for further action such as To Do items. The Immediate window lets you type and execute Visual Basic commands, possibly while a program is running, but paused.

The Output tab shows output printed by the application. Usually an application interacts with the user through its forms and dialog boxes, but it can display information here, usually to help you debug the code.

WHAT WINDOWS?

If you don’t see the Error List, Task List, and other windows, they are probably hidden. You can display many of them by selecting the appropriate item in the View menu. Commands to display some of the more exotic windows are located in other menus, such as the View menu’s Other Windows submenu and the Debug menu’s Windows submenu.

As soon as you create a new project, it is ready to run. If you open the Debug menu and select Start Debugging, the program will run. It displays only an empty form containing no controls, but the form automatically handles a multitude of mundane windowing tasks for you.

READY TO RUN

If you’re using the Visual Basic environment settings, you can simply press F5 to start the program.

Before you write a single line of code, the form lets you resize, minimize, restore, maximize, and close the form. The form draws its title bar, borders, and system menu, and repaints itself as needed when it is covered and restored. The operating system also automatically handles many tasks such as displaying the form in the Windows taskbar and Task Manager. Some operating systems, such as Windows 7 and Vista, automatically generate thumbnail previews for the Flip and Flip 3D tools that you display by pressing Alt+Tab or Windows+Tab, respectively. Visual Basic and the operating system do a ton of work for you before you even touch the project!

The form contains no controls, can’t open files, doesn’t process data, in fact doesn’t really do anything unique, but a lot of the setup is done for you. It handles the windowing chores for you so you can focus on your particular problem.

SAVING A PROJECT

Later chapters explain in depth how to add controls to a form and how to write code to interact with the form. For now, suppose you have built a project complete with controls and code.

If you try to close Visual Studio or start a new project, the dialog box shown in Figure 1-5 appears. Click Save to make the Save Project dialog box shown in Figure 1-6 appear. Click Discard to throw away the existing project. Click Cancel to continue editing the current project.

FIGURE 1-5: Before closing Visual Studio or starting a new project, you must decide what to do with the previous project.

FIGURE 1-6: Use this dialog box to save a new project.

As you work with the new project, Visual Studio saves its form definitions and code in a temporary location. Each time you run the program, Visual Studio updates the files so it doesn’t lose everything if it crashes. The files are still temporary, however.

When you are ready to make the new project permanent, open the File menu and select Save All to display the Save Project dialog box shown in Figure 1-6.

The Name field shows the name that you originally gave the project when you created it. Verify that the name is okay or change it.

Next, enter the location where you want the project saved. The default location is similar to the rather non-intuitive value shown in Figure 1-6. (This image was taken while I was logged in as the user named Developer. When you save a project, the “Developer” part of the location would be replaced with your username.)

Be sure to pick a good location before you click Save. The next time you build a project, the default will be the location you specify now so you won’t need to be quite as careful in the future, assuming you want to build a lot of projects in the same directory.

If you check the Create Directory for Solution box, Visual Studio enables the Solution Name text box and adds an extra directory above the project directory to hold the solution. This is most useful when you want to include more than one project in a single solution. For example, you might want several projects in the same solution to sit in a common solution directory.

If you have Team Foundation Server installed, you can check the Add to Source Control box to place the new project’s code under source control.

After you have entered the project name and location, and optionally specified a separate solution directory, click Save.

“SAVE AS” SURVIVAL SKILLS

The File menu’s Save As commands let you save particular pieces of the solution in new files. For example, if you have a project named OfficeArrangerMain selected in Project Explorer, the File menu contains a command named Save OfficeArrangerMain As. This command lets you save the project file with a new name. Unfortunately it doesn’t make a new copy of the whole project; it just makes a copy of the project file. That file contains information about the project on a high level such as references used by the project, files imported by the project, and the names of the forms included in the project. It does not contain the forms themselves.

Many beginners try to use the File menu’s Save As commands to make copies of a project or a solution, but that doesn’t work. Instead, use Windows Explorer to find the directory containing the whole project or solution and make a copy of the entire directory.

Similarly, if you want to back up a project or send someone a copy of a project, you need to use the entire solution directory, not just one or two of the many files that Visual Studio creates.

SUMMARY

This chapter explained how to get started using the Visual Studio integrated development environment. It showed how to configure the IDE for different kinds of development and explained that different configurations might make your version of Visual Studio look different from the screen shots shown in this book. It explained what Visual Basic projects and solutions are, and showed how to create, run, and save a new project.

The next few chapters describe parts of the IDE in greater detail. Chapter 2, “Menus, Toolbars, and Windows,” describes the commands available in the IDE and the menus, toolbars, and secondary windows that hold them.

Chapter 2

Menus, Toolbars, and Windows

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER

Finding IDE menus and tools

Setting Option Explicit, Option Strict, and Option Infer

Adding external tools to open a browser or send e-mail

Rearranging IDE windows

Displaying control properties and events

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

There are no code downloads for this chapter.

IDE TOOLS

The Visual Studio IDE is incredibly powerful and provides hundreds of tools for building and modifying projects. The price you pay for all of these powerful tools is extra complexity. Because so many tools are available, it can take some digging to find the tool you want, even if you know exactly what you need.

This chapter describes the menus, toolbars, and windows that contain the tools provided by the IDE. It explains some of the most useful tools provided by the IDE and tells where to find them, provided you haven’t moved them while customizing the IDE.

This chapter also tells how you can customize the menus and toolbars to give you easy access to the commands that you use most frequently and how to hide those that you don’t need.

MENUS

The IDE’s menus contain standard Visual Studio commands. These are generally commands that manipulate the project and the modules it contains. Some of the concepts are similar to those used by any Windows application (File ⇒ New, File ⇒ Save, Edit ⇒ Copy), but many of the details are specific to Visual Studio programming, so the following sections describe them in a bit more detail.

The menus are customizable, so you can add, remove, and rearrange the menus and the items they contain. This can be quite confusing, however, if you later need to find a command that you have removed from its normal place in the menus. Some developers place extra commands in standard menus, particularly the Tools menu, but it is generally risky to remove standard menu items. Usually it is safest to leave the standard menus alone and make custom menus and toolbars to hold customizations.

Many of the menus’ most useful commands are also available in other ways. Many provide keyboard shortcuts that make using them quick and easy. For example, Ctrl+N opens the New Project dialog box just as if you had selected the File ⇒ New Project menu command. If you find yourself using the same command very frequently, look in the menu and learn its keyboard shortcut to save time later.

Many menu commands are also available in standard toolbars. For example, the Debug toolbar contains many of the same commands that are in the Debug menu. If you use a set of menu commands frequently, you may want to display the corresponding toolbar to make using the commands easier.

Visual Studio also provides many commands through context menus. For example, if you right-click a project in the Solution Explorer, the context menu includes an Add Reference command that displays the Add Reference dialog box just as if you had invoked Project ⇒ Add Reference. Often it is easier to find a command by right-clicking an object related to whatever you want to do than it is to wander through the menus.