This is a guide to application development using Visual Basic .NET. Targeted at programmers with some prior programming experience, the book covers the major areas of application development for Microsoft's new .NET platform. After starting with the traditional hello world application, the book discusses the two basic building blocks of any .NET application built with Visual Basic - the Visual Basic .NET programming language and the .NET Framework. Topics covered include: Visual Basic language elements; Visual Basic's object-oriented language features Programming with attributes; the common language runtime; garbage collection and the finalize and dispose methods; and programmatically reading from and writing to .NET configuration files. The remainder of the book focuses on the three major kinds of applications that can be developed with the .NET Framework: Windows Forms applications, ASP.NET applications, and web services. In each case, the book shows you how to build an application using Visual Studio .NET as well as using a text editor and the Visual Basic command-line compiler. This gives you an under the hood look at what Visual Studio is doing and should allow you to gain a greater understanding of how a .NET application works - an understanding that you can take advantage of in building your own applications. Individual development topics covered in these chapters include: developing multiple document interface (MDI); windows forms applications; handling form and control placement and resizing; working with Windows forms menus; working with Windows common dialogs; taking advantage of .NET printer services programmatically; using ASP.NET HTML controls and Web controls; understanding security in ASP.NET; creating, discovering, and consuming Web services; accessing data in your .NET applications using ADO.NET.