The following list describes some links that you may find useful for learning about and installing different Visual Studio products:
● Compare Visual Studio 2015 Offerings: www.visualstudio.com/products/compare-visual-studio-2015-products-vs.aspx
● Visual Studio homepage: msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio
● Visual C# resources: msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/hh341490.aspx
● Visual Studio free products page: www.visualstudio.com/products/free-developer-offers-vs
● Visual Studio Express: www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-express-vs.aspx
● Visual Studio Downloads: www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs.aspx
● C# Express Edition homepage: www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp
At a minimum, visit the Visual Studio Express Edition page (www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-express-vs) and download and install Visual Studio Community Edition.
Running any version of Visual Studio will require that you have a reasonably fast, modern computer with a large hard disk and lots of memory. For example, I'm fairly happy running my Intel Core 2 system at 1.60 GHz with 8 GB of memory and a huge 1 TB hard drive. (That's a lot more disk space than necessary but disk is relatively cheap.)
Conventions
To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what's happening, we've used several conventions throughout the book.
Splendid Sidebars
Sidebars such as this one contain additional information and side topics.
WARNING
Boxes like this one hold important, not-to-be-missed information that is directly relevant to the surrounding text.
NOTE
Notes such as this contain tips, hints, tricks, and asides to the current discussion. They are offset and placed in italics like this.
As for styles in the text:
● New terms and important words are highlighted when they are introduced.
● Keyboard strokes look like this: Ctrl+A.
● Code, URLs, and e-mail addresses within the text are shown in monofont type as in x = 10, www.vb-helper.com, and [email protected].
● Code snippets are shown in a monofont type like this.
The code editor in Visual Studio provides a rich color scheme to indicate various parts of code syntax such as variables, comments, and C# keywords. That's a great tool to help you learn language features in the editor and to help prevent mistakes as you code, but the colors don't show up in the book.
Source Code
As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany the book. (I like to type in the code because it helps me focus on it so I get a better understanding.)
Many of the examples show only the code that is relevant to the current topic and may be missing some of the extra details that you need to make the example work properly. If you get stuck, e-mail me or download the solution from the book's web page.
All of the source code used in this book is available for download on the book's website. Any updates to the code will be posted there.
Errata
The Wrox editors and I make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata you may save another reader hours of frustration and at the same time you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.
To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book details page, click on the Errata link. On this page you can view all errata that have been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list including links to each book's errata is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.
If you don't spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We'll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book's errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.
p2p.wrox.com
For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at p2p.wrox.com. The forums are a web-based system for you to post messages relating to Wrox books and related technologies and interact with other readers and technology users. The forums offer a subscription feature to e-mail you topics of interest of your choosing when new posts are made to the forums. Wrox authors, editors, other industry experts, and your fellow readers are present on these forums.
At http://p2p.wrox.com you will find a number of different forums that will help you not only as you read this book but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, just follow these steps:
1. Go to p2p.wrox.com and click on the Register link.
2. Read the terms of use and click Agree.
3. Complete the required information to join, as well as any optional information you wish to provide, and click Submit.
4. You will receive an e-mail with information describing how to verify your account and complete the joining process.
NOTE
You can read messages in the forums without joining P2P, but to post your own messages, you must join.
Once you join, you can post new messages and respond to messages other users post. You can read messages at any time on the web. If you would like to have new messages from a particular forum e-mailed to you, click on the “Subscribe to this Forum” icon by the forum name in the forum listing.
For more information about how to use Wrox P2P, be sure to read the P2P FAQs for answers to questions about how the forum software works, as well as many common questions specific to P2P and Wrox books. To read the FAQs, click on the FAQ link on any P2P page.
Using the P2P forums allows other readers to benefit from your questions and any answers they generate. I monitor my book's forums and respond whenever I can help.
If you have other comments, suggestions, or questions that you don't want to post in the forums, feel free to e-mail me at [email protected].