Mastering Visual Studio .NET provides you, as an experienced programmer, with all the information needed to get the most out of the latest and greatest development tool from Microsoft®. It doesn't matter if you're an MFC, C++, STL, ATL, COM, Win32, Visual Basic, C#, HTML, XML, ASP.NET, database, web application, Web service, NT service, stand-alone client, or component programmer targeting Windows® or one of the Windows variants (i.e. Windows CE or the PocketPC) -- this is the book that will help you master the toolkit. Written by experienced developers and trainers John Flanders, Ian Griffiths, and Chris Sells, Mastering Visual Studio .NET begins with fundamental information about maximizing the power of Visual Studio .NET as it comes out of the box, including the following topics:

• projects and solutions

• files and the various file editors

• debugging

• web projects

• database projects

• setup projects

• integrating controls and components with VS.NET

• the VS.NET automation object model

• macros and add-ins

• custom wizards

• the Visual Studio Integration Program (VSIP)

To experience the full spectrum of functionality and extensibility, Mastering Visual Studio .NET provides you with the practical depth and detail needed to best put these features to work. The second section of the book is about extending VS.NET to suit your specific needs: If you're serious about using the VS.NET toolkit, you'll want a book of this magnitude close by. Mastering Visual Studio .NET will take you beyond what you'll read in the standard documentation by offering hints and recommendations that the authors and the community at large have found to be useful after many years of experience.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

Nice overview of Visual Studio - 2003-04-14
Reviewer Rating:
The book deals with mostly an overview of VS .Net features. They give a general guideline on how to write VS solutions / projects - components - scripts, amd how to debug programs. I bought the book mostly since it's the only one I found that discusses VSIP. I did not find a lot of information on VSIP 7 pages long chapter which barly discusses an overview. The book authors tried their samples on both VS 2002 and VS 2003. I would not recommend this book to people who are brand new VS users or experts on VS. I would recommend it for some users how are looking for some extra shortcuts / functionality here and there. I'm giving this book 3 stars since I would have expected a bit more in debth analysis and more samples.

Has Good Overview. Could be better - 2003-07-15
Reviewer Rating:
It covers many topics around Visual Studio.net. Its coverage of Debugging(Chap 3), Macros(Chap 8) are good.

One missing piece is Web Services with Visual Studio.net. I didn't find any related information in it. Also, serveral times, when I needed some information about Visual Studio.net, I couldn't find it in this book. Though I've been using VS.net for several months, I never needed most of the information in this book.

Lots of good material - 2003-07-06
Reviewer Rating:
I have to admit that when I picked up a copy of this book, I was expecting a rather out of date re-hash of much of Microsoft's Visual Studio documentation. I was pleasantly surprised. Even though Visual Studio .NET 2003 only recently became commercially available, this book is written for the new IDE (rather than last year's model). The book goes through the basics of projects, debugging, and even macros (in addition to a wide range of other topics).

This book follows the basic flow a programmer would follow when setting up and creating a project in Visual Studio, which makes it easy to follow along (especially if you are new to VS.NET). After a discussion on setting up a project (including the differences between the various project types), the reader is presented with a discussion on debugging tips and techniques (including debugging configuration in the project's properties). Since web projects are a little different from creating a Windows application, there is a whole chapter dedicated to configuration and debugging of a web application. Other chapters include a discussion on how to perform database work through the IDE, and instructions on developing installation projects.

My absolute favorite chapter, however, was on Automation, Macros, and Add-ins. In this chapter, the reader learns the basics of creating macros that integrate directly into VS.NET. If you are familiar with recording macros in the Microsoft Office applications, you will be pleased to learn that the syntax and functionality is similar (although instead of writing macros in VBA, they are written in VB.NET). There is then further discussion on automating the IDE to perform scheduled tasks (like automated builds).

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