Book excerpt: For introductory courses in Visual Basic Programming, offered in departments of Information Technology, Computer Science or Business. Merging the concept of a lab manual with that of a conventional textbook, the Deitels have crafted an innovative approach that enables students to learn programming while having a mentor-like book by their side. This best-seller blends the Deitel(tm) signature Live-Code(tm) Approach with their Application-Driven(tm) methodology. Students learn programming and Visual Basic by working through a set of applications. Each tutorial builds upon previously learned concepts while learning new ones, An abundance of self assessment exercises are available at the end of most chapters to reinforce key ideas. This approach makes it possible to cover a wealth of programming constructs within the Visual Basic 2008 environment. Key topics include Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Visual Programming, Framework Class Library (FCL), Controls (Buttons, TextBoxes, ListBoxes, Timers, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, Menus, Dialogs), Event Handling, Debugger, Algorithms, Control Structures, Methods, Random-Number Generation, Arrays, Classes, Objects, Collections, Mouse & Keyboard Event Handling, Strings, Files, Database, Graphics, Multimedia, GUI Design and Web applications. Deitel accomplishes this by making highly technical topics as simple as possible. The Third Edition is fully updated for Visual Studio 2008, Visual Basic 2008 and .NET 3.5.