Appendix V
Visual Studio Versions
Most of the code in this book was written with a prerelease “release candidate” (RC) version of Visual Studio Ultimate 2012. The code does not require any of the special tools that are included in the Ultimate edition so they should run in Professional and Premium editions, too.
However, the free product Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 is another matter. With the Visual Studio 2012 release, Microsoft introduced Metro-style applications. To strongly encourage developers to move away from Windows desktop-style applications and toward Metro-style development, Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 does not include templates for building Windows desktop-style applications.
Because Windows desktop programming is a relatively stable and straightforward technology, I used Windows desktop applications for most of the examples in this book. That means you may have trouble running or reproducing those examples if you are using Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8.
Fortunately all is not lost! After much impassioned feedback by early testers including Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), Microsoft decided to create a new edition: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. That version, which will let you create Windows desktop applications, was not available when this was written but should be available in the fall of 2012.
For more information on the Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate, Premium, and Professional editions, see http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compare.
To download Visual Studio Express RC for Windows 8, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/apps/hh852659.aspx. (The location of this information may move when Microsoft posts the final release. You should be able to find it easily by searching online for “Visual Studio Express RC for Windows 8.”)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROD STEPHENS started out as a mathematician, but while studying at MIT, he discovered how much fun programming is and has been programming professionally ever since. During his career, he has worked on an eclectic assortment of applications in such fields as telephone switching, billing, repair dispatching, tax processing, wastewater treatment, concert ticket sales, cartography, and training for professional football players.
Rod is a Microsoft Visual Basic Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and has taught introductory programming at ITT Technical Institute. He has written more than two dozen books that have been translated into languages from all over the world, and more than 250 magazine articles covering Visual Basic, C#, Visual Basic for Applications, Delphi, and Java.
Rod’s popular VB Helper website (www.vb-helper.com) receives several million hits per month and contains thousands of pages of tips, tricks, and example programs for Visual Basic programmers, as well as example code for this book. His C# Helper website (www.csharphelper.com) contains similar material for C# programmers.
You can contact Rod at [email protected] or [email protected].
ABOUT THE TECHNICAL EDITOR
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