Unlike other books on the subject, Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition doesn't assume you're a novice. It's a detailed, professional reference to the Visual Basic language-a reference that you can use to jog your memory about a particular language element or parameter. It'll also come in handy when you want to make sure that there isn't some "gotcha" you've overlooked with a particular language feature.

The book is divided into three major parts: Part I introduces the main features and concepts behind Visual Basic programming; Part II thoroughly details all the functions, statements, directives, objects, and object members that make up the Visual Basic language; and Part III contains a series of helpful appendices. Some of the new features covered include Generics, a convenient new library called My Namespace, and the operators used to manipulate data in Visual Basic.

No matter how much experience you have programming with Visual Basic, you want Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition close by, both as a standard reference guide and as a tool for troubleshooting and identifying programming problems.