Dill

ok heres the thing... I am wanting (for reasons unknown) to write a program that first and formost will make telephone voice calls to home phones. This will later be expanded on to provide answer phone etc. but first i would like to create the core which makes the phone calls. then i will need to adapt this to receive calls also. The problem is i have no real idea where to start. any suggestions? Dill

if you are wanting to get the raw text from an RTF string you can put the string into an rtfbox.rtf and read the rtfbox.text. i dont have .net in front of me to test this but i think it will work. Dill

Long Live Pascal

i did something similar. A project management program. i drew the full plan onto a panel using the gdi and put this panel inside a fixed size panel. i set up some events to allow easy scrolling around with the mouse (adobe hand style). It is quite smple to use the database information to draw the paths you need. The scale was different (up to months) but its another possibility. Dill

One more thing ;) I need to make sure that my taskbar app is kicked off on startup. I have noticed that when I restart I have to select the taskbar app to start it running. would this be registry? code? Dill

IT WORKS!! For real this time!! fully tested. Im not entirely sure exactly what was wrong. Think it may have been multiple things. but once i made the keyfile for my control and added the assembly information (it still didnt work). I reregistered my vb dll and added it to the GAC too (I dont think this was necessary but wth). gave it a really hot cup of tea (brownian motion producer) and it is now happily sat on my taskbar doing exactly what it says on the tin :D Thanks to both mskeel and PD for your help :) Dill

Ok so maybe i was a little premature in my celebrations!!! It works great with a standard text box. my dll tho 'seems' to work until i try to add it to the GAC. It tells me it doesnt have a strong name. After reading the example again and inserting a line in the assembly info file i managed to give the taskbar app a strong name. But now it says my vb dll doesnt have a strong name. problem is I dont have a keyfile for it and have no idea where to get one (or create one). What do I need to do to get the taskbar program to accept my vb custom control? Dill

Well I now have a working taskbar application, many thanks mskeel. To summarize... The download from that site does all the funky stuff and the step by step instructions for creating your user control are real easy (especially if you don't try to translate it!) so i made a blank control for the taskbar. I then created a normal custom control in vb.net with all the functionality i wanted on the taskbar. compiled my dll, added it to the example, GAC'd it, REGASM'd it, and VOILA. Many thanks again Dill

Ok I just managed to get some time to look at this. I have a couple of questions. First I am trying to translate to VB as i go through it. This may not be wise but my VERY limited knowledge of c# makes it a better idea i think. the bit that puzzles me is this ... [bandObject("Hello World Bar", BandObjectStyle.Horizontal | BandObjectStyle.ExplorerToolbar, HelpText = "Shows bar that says hello.")] public class HelloWorldBar : BandObject { ... when i try to convert this to VB I get ... <BandObject("Hello World Bar", _ BandObjectStyle.Horizontal Or BandObjectStyle.ExplorerToolbar, _ HelpText = "Shows bar that says hello.")> _ Public Class HelloWorldBar Inherits BandObject ... but this gives me an error on helptext saying its not declared. Is my conversion correct? If not what would be the correct way to implement this attribute? Thanx Dill

nuff said lol

lol PD snap

you could convert the color to the ARGB values and save those in the registry and convert it back to a color using color.fromargb

Another quality example from the mighty MSDN. I tried it too. Maybe this only works with .net 2010

I have often used a global error handler in my sub main. it helps filter the important information. Remember try catc statements can be nested so if you need to put in some more specific error handling then np. this however will also need to point to the error log. While I agree that global error handling can be useless and in some respects more effort than its worth, especially if the wrong information is relayed in the error message it can make it harder to find errors than if you had no error handling at all! However i frrl that if done correctly it can simplify the debugging process Dill

ok heres the thing... I have been asked to create a program that will log all messages sent and received via "MSN Zone Messages". For those of you unfamilliar the messages are individual messages sent with the message text in what appears to be a label and a text box area for a reply. i have used a simple keyboard interupt to obtain keystrokes for the reply and api calls to getwindowtext. My problem is logging incoming messages. I am unsure where to start. Should i be trying to intercept the message before it gets to the zm program? should i try to do some sort of capture when the message is active? I think the main issue i have is I do not know how the text is being transfered or displayed. Has anyone tried anything similar to this before and what is the best way arround it. Thanks Dill

That looks like just the ticket! Ty. Wont be able to work on it for a while now (more important project to do), but I will keep you informed of its progress :D

Same again i think. For some reason the paint even is not called when a control is resized. I think standard controls must call the paint event explicitly. I had this problem with my GDI buttons. It was ok if i enlarged the control but went nuts if i tried to reduce the size. And sometimes there were residue bits of the old image. I solved it by a simple me.refresh in the controls resize event. Dill

I encountered a similar problem with some gdi buttons i created. when being resized they didnt redraw correctly. I found this to be because i wasn't refreshing the display on resizing. I'm not sure your problem is the same but try putting a me.refresh in the resize event. Dill

Did you get this sorted? Appologies for not posting earlier but i just read this post while wasting some time (can't sleep boss is hovering :D). I found the easiest way to change a color of an entire picture was to fill the path with a solid color and overlay the semitransparent image. It is crude and changes the whole path but it worked for the gdi textured buttons i created. if you want to do this with just a section of the image you could still create the path for the sections you wish to change color and overlay a semitransparent color (change the A value in ARGB). Dill

More info... I have a couple of friends working on it but a question arose which i didn't think of... OS It didnt even enter my small mind that it may not be possible when usin windows 2000 (my OS of choice) and only on XP (yuck!) I suppose it would be nice to find out how to do it in XP anyway but ideally i need to be able to do it in 2000. C'mon u guru's. I know ya got some tricks up ya sleeves :D Dill

ok heres the thing... I am wanting to modify my program to be able to display information in the taskbar. That is, I wish to make an app that acts like windows media player when minimised. All i need to display is a ready created custom control (basic tickertape style textbox). I have searched for this solution on the net but can only find reference to the msdn site for deskbands which gives its example in c++. This example is asking for implementations i have never heard of and cannot find in vb.net. I was wondering if anyone had managed to create such a taskbar app in vb.net and some pointers to how. TY in advance Dill

You could even inherit the messagebox to keep all the functionality. override the onpaint to include your own color. I dont have .net in front of me right now so this is just untested theory but it should work. Dill

I got so pissed off with the limited functionality of the common button i created a couple of controls using the GDI. Its quite simple to do and you can add any functionality you choose. As for the common button i wouldnt know... havent used it for months! Dill

WOW I don't think I could stomach reading an ENTIRE programming manual from cover to cover! I am more of a reference type of guy. I have found however that reding up on the concepts behind the language can be helpful. There are several articles on the net both for and against the OO aproach and after reading those i came to the conclusion that the old saying about pleasuring all the people all the time is true. What is right for one is most definately not right for another. Me? I love .net I am still early on in the learning phase and it doesnt help that i have to use VB6 every day in my work (it clouds the .net mind!) and although I find tasks harder to accomplish in .net, I find this is purely because I don't know how! Sure, there are things that microsoft have made more complicated, and sure their support is at best unhelpful but with the wonderful world of www. I have found i can get the answer to almost any problem. My advice would be to give it time. And of course, should you find a question to which you need an answer, post it and the Pentium Guy can give us more of his wisdom (You're welcome.) Dill

i believe this is your problem running the 4 threads is not a problem but when you loop you are trying to start a thread that is already running, hence the error. if you were wanting a dynamic number of threads maybe try creating a collection of threads and adding a new one when required. Public MyThreads As New ArrayList Sub main() For i As Integer = 0 To NumberofThreadsRequired AddThread() Next End Sub Private Sub AddThread() Dim MyNewThread As New Thread(AddressOf MyMethod) MyThreads.Add(MyNewThread) End Sub Private Sub MyMethod() 'Do some stuff End Sub