While earlier versions of Visual Basic are targeted for Microsoft Windows client applications, the versions beginning with Visual Basic .NET 2002 are intended for creating XML Web service applications as well. For this purpose, Visual Basic generates managed code for the common language runtime. This entails changes to the language itself.
The changes in Visual Basic are intended to:
Simplify the language and make it more consistent.
Add new features requested by users.
Make code easy to read and maintain.
Help programmers avoid introducing coding errors.
Make applications more robust and easier to debug.
The following topics describe language changes from previous versions of Visual Basic. For a discussion of features that are new to the Visual Basic language, see What's New in the Visual Basic Language.
Provides links to topics covering changes to data type declaration, usage, and conversion, including the Integer Data Type (Visual Basic) and the universal data type.
Includes information on loop continuation, guaranteed resource disposal, mixed access properties, unsigned data types, operator overloading, generic types, and Common Language Specification (CLS) compliance.
Covers changes to Visual Basic that include, among others, Web functionality, projects, forms, constants, the Circle, Line, and Pset methods, and the integrated development environment (IDE).