Summary

The .NET Framework defines more than 160 namespaces, and this chapter describes only a few. It provides a brief overview of some of the most important System namespaces and gives more detailed examples that demonstrate regular expressions, XML, cryptography, reflection, and Direct3D.

Even in these somewhat specialized areas, the examples can cover only a tiny fraction of the capabilities of the namespaces. However, the examples should give you an idea of the types of features that these namespaces can add to your application. If you need to do something similar, they will hopefully inspire you to do more in-depth research so that you can take full advantage of these powerful tools.

The chapters in this book cover a wide variety of Visual Basic programming topics. In the first part of the book, Chapters 1 through 14 explain basic topics of Visual Basic programming (such as the language itself, using standard controls, and draw and drop). In the second part of the book, Chapters 15 through 19 describe object-oriented concepts (such as class and structure declaration, namespaces, and generics). In the third part of the book, Chapters 20 through 26 cover graphical topics (such as how to draw shapes and text, image manipulation, printing, and report generation). In the fourth part of the book, Chapters 27 through 32 explain ways a program can interact with its environment by using such techniques as configuration files, the Registry, streams, and file system objects.

The rest of this book contains appendixes that provide a categorized reference for Visual Basic .NET. You can use them to quickly review the syntax of a particular command, select from among several overloaded versions of a routine, or refresh your memory of what a particular class can do.