Fixing the namespace problem in VB.Net XML literals

Recently I tried to parse a Web page output using the shiny VB.Net syntax. I had an XElement representing a dropdown, and tried to count the options using something like

purposeChooser..Count

Although I could clearly see that there is one child "option" element, it kept returning a zero. Then I realized that there might be some namespace trouble. Indeed, the top html tag had some namespace attached, and, naturally, it was inherited by the select (and the option) element. However, it didn't include a prefix, so how do I tell what to look for? The answer is, you can import an XML namespace just like you can a "regular" one, putting this at the top of your code:

Imports

And now this expression

purposeChooser..Count

returns 1, as expected.