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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Where Do I Begin? | |
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| Where Do We Begin? | |
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| Programming the Easy Way | |
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| Planning a Program Is Like Planning to Build a House | |
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| We Receive a Call from the China Shop | |
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| We Meet with Our Client | |
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| The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) | |
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| The Preliminary Investigation | |
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| Analysis | |
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| Design | |
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| Development | |
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| Implementation | |
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| Audit and Maintenance | |
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| Where to from Here? | |
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| Summary | |
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| What Is a Computer Program? | |
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| What Is a Computer? | |
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| Data | |
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| Memory | |
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| Computer Storage | |
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| RAM versus Storage | |
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| What Makes a Computer Program Run? | |
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| A Little Computer History | |
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| DOS | |
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| Microsoft Windows | |
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| A More In-depth Look at Windows | |
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| Virtual Memory | |
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| Multitasking | |
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| Running Programs in Windows | |
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| The Windows Handle | |
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| Windows Messages | |
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| The Focus | |
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| What Is a Computer Program? | |
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| Summary | |
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| Getting Comfortable with Visual Basic | |
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| The Visual Basic Environment | |
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| Preparing the Way for Programming | |
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| Let's Start Up Visual Basic! | |
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| The Visual Basic Project | |
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| The IDE | |
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| The Modes of Visual Basic | |
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| The Visual Basic Menu Bar | |
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| The Visual Basic Toolbar | |
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| The Visual Basic Toolbox | |
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| The Properties Window | |
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| Summary | |
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| Programming Is Easy | |
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| Less Is Best | |
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| Visual Basic Properties, Methods, and Events | |
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| Visual Basic Properties | |
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| Running the China Shop Project for the First Time | |
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| Properties of the Form | |
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| Visual Basic Methods | |
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| Visual Basic Events | |
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| Summary | |
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| Building the User Interface | |
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| Completing the User Interface | |
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| John Smiley's Ten-Step Guide to Successful Interface Development | |
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| The Visual Basic Toolbox | |
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| The China Shop Controls | |
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| Creation of the China Shop Form | |
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| Let's Run the China Shop Project! | |
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| Common Properties of the Controls in the China Shop Project | |
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| CheckBox Properties | |
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| Button Control Properties | |
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| ColorDialog Properties | |
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| GroupBox Properties | |
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| PictureBox Control Properties | |
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| Label Properties | |
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| ListBox Properties | |
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| RadioButton Properties | |
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| Timer Properties | |
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| Tab Order and the TabIndex Property | |
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| A Surprise Visit | |
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| Summary | |
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| A First Look at Coding | |
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| Events and Event-Driven Programming | |
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| In the Old Days... | |
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| The Modern Approach | |
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| What's an Event? | |
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| Writing Code | |
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| Program Comments | |
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| The Line Continuation Character (_) | |
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| A Visual Basic Code Overview | |
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| The Visual Basic Debugger | |
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| The Debug Menu | |
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| Summary | |
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| Data | |
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| Computer Data | |
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| Variables | |
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| How Do We Create a Variable? | |
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| Variable Declaration | |
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| Do Variables Need to Be Initialized? | |
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| Visual Basic Data Types | |
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| Numeric Data Types | |
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| The String Data Type | |
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| Other Data Types | |
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| Property Data Types | |
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| Constants | |
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| Operations on Data | |
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| Arithmetic Operations | |
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| Comparison Operators | |
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| Logical Operators | |
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| Summary | |
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| Selection Structures | |
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| Falling Rock Behavior | |
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| How Can We Improve Upon This? | |
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| If...Then | |
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| If...Then...Else | |
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| If...Then...Elself | |
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| Select...Case | |
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| The China Shop Project | |
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| Reviewing the Prototype | |
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| Summary | |
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| Loops | |
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| Why Loops? | |
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| The For...Next Loop | |
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| Do...Loops | |
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| Mr. Bullina Sends a Surprise | |
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| Summary | |
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| String Manipulation | |
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| What Exactly Is a String? | |
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| String Concatenation | |
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| Breaking Strings Apart | |
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| Summary | |
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| File Operations | |
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| Disk File Operations | |
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| Writing Data to a Disk File | |
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| Reading Data from a Disk File | |
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| Summary | |
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| Finishing the User Interface | |
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| Where Are We Now? | |
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| Drop-Down Menus | |
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| A First Look at the Main Menu Control | |
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| Coding the Menu Control | |
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| More on the MsgBox Function | |
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| The Return Value of the MsgBox Function | |
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| The Button Argument of the MsgBox Function | |
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| Summary | |
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| Arrays | |
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| Why Arrays? | |
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| What's an Array? | |
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| Dynamic Arrays | |
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| Array Dimensions | |
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| Modifying the China Shop Project to Include Arrays | |
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| Summary | |
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| Error Handling | |
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| Common Beginner Errors | |
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| Forgetting to Increment a Counter Variable | |
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| Forgetting to Add to an Accumulator | |
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| Forgetting to Open a File | |
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| Opening a File That's Already Open | |
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| Forgetting to Close a File | |
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| Reading Beyond the End of the File | |
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| Writing to a File Opened for Input | |
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| Your Program Doesn't Find Any Records | |
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| The File You Are Reading Is Missing or Empty | |
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| Reading Too Many or Too Few Fields from a Disk File | |
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| Division by Zero | |
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| Error Handling | |
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| Unstructured Error Handling: On Error GoTo | |
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| Structured Error Handling: Try and Catch | |
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| Error Handling in the China Shop Project | |
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| Summary | |
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| Customizing Your Program | |
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| Writing to the Windows Registry | |
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| GetSetting and SaveSetting | |
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| Using RegEdit | |
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| Reading from the Windows Registry | |
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| Optimizing Visual Basic Code | |
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| User-Written Procedures | |
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| Subprocedures in the China Shop Project | |
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| Testing Our Program | |
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| We Meet at the Bullina China Shop | |
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| Summary | |