Denaes

myClass ClassInstance = new myClass(); //where myClass is the name of your class - class and filename should be the same. myClass in myClass.cs //Inside of a procedure MessageBox.Show(ClassInstance.MemberProperty); This works for getting default settings from a class. If you did something more complex like set the settings on Form3 and wanted to read them on Form2, you need to declair the variables as static (I believe - Shared in VB.Net) and the variable will be available throughout every instance of a class. This is good for things like connectionstrings. Another alternate method is to use serialization to save your values, so when you close your Form2 and release the instance of the class, it saves it's variables to the disk. when another instance is opened, it loads it's variables back to the form. little tricks I had to use to get a LOT of global variables available globally without making them public in a module.

I wouldn't say it provides no usefull information. It tells you if you have instant messages. Because I'm unpopular, thats about never for me :P I didn't realize it was beyond setting settings and in something that you guys couldn't control yourselves. I just saw that the other forum had theirs working and with relevent information... kinda. Its like the XP SP2 news ticker :D Its now that I realize I couldn't be a journalist. Not only would I be hardpressed to make a multi-page article out of it once, there are like 90 5 page articles on it and it's just comming out.

ExtremeVB Talk and you guys use the same forums - same owners, right? Well theirs works. They get microsoft feeds and are current as of Aug 7. Can't you ask them how they got it working or copy their settings or something?

A tale of two monitors. NVidia gives me the runaround. Because I bought it through Dell, it's their problem. Dell gives me the runaround because its only guaranteed to work on XP and I'm running windows 2000 professional. Besides they have no in depth knowledge of NVidia and what would cause/not cause that sort of problem. When I got my computer, I had XP Home on it. I never used the 2x monitor because it worked awfully. because one is a widescreen and the other is a regular screen, it would cause the fullscreen to be larger than the display, causing it to scroll down and right about an inch. Also because it carried over the taskbar, the time and bar would constantly be gone and I hated having the screen scroll and jerk around as I navigated. So I thought 2 monitors was stupid. Then I found my old Windows 2000 Pro disc and put that on my computer. It was okay, but my trackpad and one set of mice buttons on the laptop didn't work with it. Again, no dell support as it was windows 2000. I threw XP Home back on because I wasn't going to do any ASP.Net apps anytime soon. It was like magic. both screens were perfect. It seperated everything perfectly. Fullscreen would always take fullscreen on the computer monitor. It was kinda annoying that whenever I would run a DVD/video, the external monitor would automatically be pirated into a fullscreen mode. Made it annoying trying to watch a movie and try to do something. But the taskbar and clock were kept to the laptop screen. That was nice. But alas, things come to an end. I thought I was going to start learning ASP.Net apps again, my XP Home got seriously wigged by spyware and spyapps. I decided to reinstall using 2000 pro because I had a cd with service pack 4 on it. That would save so much time vs downloading, installing and restarting 20 times with XP. I got ALL of the up to date bios and driverupdates, everything. Now something doesn't feel "solid" about my installation and that's saying something since Windows 2000 Pro was my favorite OS. I used to be able to keep it up and running for weeks without a reboot. But this time its... tainted. It requires reboots, memory leaks abound. I see the IIS services hogging memory. Even worse, my second monitor is all wiggy. THIS time, it decides that the only matching resolution is to magically cut an inch off the top and bottom of the monitor. So it's like having a 17" monitor with a 14" viewable area. It tries to keep up with the laptop monitor instead of being it's own monitor and makes text tinier and hard to read... kinda defeating the purpose of having an extra monitor for documentation. I noticed that my configuration under Properties->Settings->Monitor (that controls resolution) is severely limited. NVidia software is providing 100% of the support. My taskbar is spanning both screens. As I search the internet, I only see props for XP being native in handling multiple monitors and being truely top notch. I also just found Cirri and some other utility that lets you develop ASP.Net on XP home. I'm starting to back things up on my external harddrive for my move back to XP Home. Maybe that'll fix my problems to a degree. As a note, the only fullscreen gaming fix I have is to activate both monitors, make the external one the primary monitor - then turn off the monitor sharing. It gives me a normal sized monitor for fullscreen apps. But if I keep both monitors on, it really distorts the resolution on my laptop and things look wider and squater. So I'll probobly be making a move back to XP home... I also have a beta (or is it alpha?) of Longhorn. Is that even worth me asking?

Well, that's two worries of mine soothed. It IS usefull and it IS available at like half off without being a pirated copy. So, it lasts for about a year? If new software comes out (like VS 2005) durring your suscription, are you eligible for that as well?

ExtremeVB has the same forums and their "Programming Tips:" bar actually works. Any way you can ask them how they did it and make ours work as well? Or maybe at least allow people to collapse it and have it stay collapsed instead of popping back out again on future visits? I think its even funnier that we've had Macromedia news on a .Net forums for like 5 months :D

My wife and I are starting a Design/Development company and I started looking into buisiness costs. I start thinking of what I need for a company and I come across MSDN Subscriptions. Here is what it seems to offer: VS.Net Enterprise Architect 2003 Visual Studio 6 Enterprise Visual Studio Tools for Office Windows 2000 Professional/Server/Advanced Server XP Home/Professional Server 2003 SQL Server 2000 A bunch of other server things (BizTalk, Exchange server, commerce server, etc) MS Office Pro Enterprise 2003 Visio Project MapPoint The retail price is 2,700. I guess this lasts for a time frame - like a year probobly? But it seems they send you CD/DVDs of the software and everything. I know you have access to VS 2005 (the rest of us just have access to the Express versions). I've seen prices as low as 1800 for the full non-student package. Even at 2,700 this seems to be extremely worth it for developers who don't own Visual Studio, SQL Server 2000, MS Office 2003 (I'm still running off of 2000), etc. Any downsides to this? If you have it subscribed for a year, and VS.Net 2005 comes out, do you get that as well? I'm curious to hear from any current subscribers. It seems like an awesome deal to take up once every year or 3. I was sweating my startup costs at having to get VS 2003 and upgrade to 2005 - or just waiting for 2005, SQL Server 2000 and a few other odds n ends. This seems like it would kill 3 birds with one stone as well as a few squirls, rabbits and even a llama! Is there a reason NOT to do this? Just for VS.Net 2005, SQL Server 2000 (maybe 2005 will be out soon?) a few operating systems and having things sent to you on DVD seems more than worth it.

I found something about this "Cassini" that is a .Net implimented web server that can run on XP Home. Honestly I'd rather have an app I can start and stop over IIS. I'm not running a server myself and I don't need all of those services constantly running. Is this viable? I've heard it's not perfect, but I can upload ASP.Net apps to my web server and test them out as well.

I own XP Home. I don't have anything budgeted to purchase XP Pro anytime soon. Currently I'm only a desktop developer, but I need to move into ASP.Net soon. I have a web server with ASP.net (v1, v1.1 and v2) and SQL Server running under 2003 Server. If I want to develop on my computer at home, how would this be possible to perform without upgrading to XP Pro? Can you code, then upload and test online (that would be annoying)? Any way to write and test on XP Home locally? Any help would be great, thanks :)

FPS is first person shooter, not frames per second right? I'm sitting on two simulation games I can't play, Baulders Gate, Arcanum, 3 puzzle games where they thought it would be cute to go full screen... You know how sad it is when I download a PSX and GBA emulator becuase they're the only way I can play a game on my computer? GBA is annoying because I love my SP, but I don't have a rom cartridge, so I can't play my game on my computer AND SP, it's one or the other. I wish they had a way to download the saved data to your GBA... probobly is some expensive cart reader/writer... For the most part I've been playing older FF games on my computer... FF7, 8, Tactics. I have a few other "hardly touched" PS games I can play as well. But it just annoys me that I can't play some of the games that I love because I have an odd video configuration under windows 2000. windows XP Home handled my video solution a little better, but I had no IIS for ASP.Net

I find most games like that very droll. No offense to people who like them, but I can do without realistic realtime animation. It's probobly just me, but I get bored of them very quickly because the plot is normally non-existant or I just don't care about it. I don't mean to knock those that do like those sorts of games. Thats just fine. Most people who like those games enjoy the head-to-head game much more than player vs computer anyway. I have a widescreen laptop which means automatically 95% of fullscreen games wont' work on my PC. I also have two monitors. My 17" laptop widescreen monitor and 17" Flatscreen CRT. I have two monitors because I like to do two things at once and/or spread out. I watch movies on one monitor while I program. I program in one window and keep my helpfiles/ebooks/wepages open in the other for easy access. Currently I have Visual Studio open to my "Test-Help" Solution, which I keep open in case I need to test out C# or VB code to help others on a forum. I have two documents open in MS Word - one is a book I'm helping to edit and the other are the notes I'm taking for editorial changes. I also have web browsers open and an mp3 player. The last 4 games I've purchased that I've wanted to actually play wont even run unless I discconect my external monitor. Their "problemless full screen" is a huge hassle. It attempts to fullscreen across both monitors. Even if that 640x480 (whatever is standard) spread out across 12" high and 36" across really sucks. Even when I discconect my extra monitor everything is distorted because my screen is widescreen. Doing it with an option or 3 for a window isn't that much harder once you have a game engine, mapping engine, ai engine, etc. 640x480 screen is still the same size to the computer wether it takes up the full screen or is in a window. It just means that on my computer it'll take up 3/4ths of my screen and not distort. I'm not looking for full immersion and thats ok. The games I enjoy don't require that normally. a good puzzle game isn't any better/worse because I can watch a movie at the same time. My RPGs arn't any worse because I can go into my status screen and check my email really quick without wigging out the resolution and possibly corrupting my game. I'm a gamer, but not a video gamer. I play real roleplaying games in real life and I do get immersed into them. games on my computer are just something to blow off stress, relax or kill some time when my brain is fried. I'm just wondering, with 2-3 monitors becomming more commonplace (cheaper to get 3 15" CRTs and an extra 2 crappy video cards than one 23" CRT) as well as odd screen sizes due to widescreen laptops and the newer plasma TVs you can hook up to your computer, how the video game industry will change to accodate them.

Just some quick notes. First off, I LOVE C# 2005. Its just awesome. And thats just the express BETA version. It should get better. But unfortunately as I need to work and produce results and 2005 has no "go live" liscence, I need to continue to work in 2003. As to it being "lightweight", I think not. DevEnv.exe (visual studio 2003) normally takes up between 40 and 80 megs of ram. Thats for a project that spans 15 forms and 30 or so classes. C# 2005 would regularily take up 200-300mb of ram. I have 512 and if I was doing multitasking (IE open, MS Word, winamp/DVD player) it would start pushing my computer into using virtual memory on the hard drive. So much for .Net apps giving up extra memory if it's needed elsewere. Yeah, I was truely impressed by the functionality of C#, but really all it was doing was bringing up to near par with VB's intellisense and smart code and including some much needed bracket highlighting. As to the price... the 2003 "Standard" editions of C# and VB were both retailed at 109 and everyone online was selling them for 99 bucks. I'm not sure how that wasn't in the average hobbiests pricerange. If you were really a hobbiest and not interested in making money, you could get the Student "Standards" for like 30 bucks each and Studio for like 150. Can't sell the code, but its fine for a hobby :) I personally cannot wait for 2005 to come out. Really, I havn't been this excited about software in a LONG time.

If done properly (like using Design Patterns, even making up your own Patterns) OOP will render code more readable without even looking at the code. Looking at the pattern would help someone figure out what does what. Yes, OOP should help make things much more clear than procedural. As far as I know there are degrees of OOP, and in some cases the most "Correct" and "Elegant" OOP design might be a flop performance wise.

I don't know what the fixation is on fullscreen. I've always hated them. Thats the point of windows, to have windows. Fast forward to me getting a widescreen laptop... now fullscreen games don't even work on my computer at all. Anyone know of games that are NOT fullscreen? I prefer RPG/Strategy/Puzzle games that you can play in a window. Diablo II was great because of this :)

create an event called booSuccess_Changed (or booSuccess_False) or something in the class. Raise the event whenever you set it to false. Add a handler for the event on the procedure you want to handle the event.

Tools->Options->Environment Folder Click general Settings (you might be on this page by default) and there is a button that says "Reset Windows Layout"

it took them a DAY to port it from C++ to managed C++!? Hmm, I guess you can really get some C++ vs C++.Net benchmark tests on that.

I think I needed to do that for a component... then realized that you couldn't do it with components themselves (because of what they inherited). Then I realized that I could include all of the component variables in a class and make that object serializable... So you have to imagine me spending 2 hours getting it to work, realizing it doesn't... spending 2 hours finding a ghetto workaround to keep the project rolling (.mdb file for settings! ewww :p), then realizing that components also have classes so I can make those classes serializable... It was one of those days that I would have pulled my hair out if I wern't bald :D XML is one of the most intimidatable things in programming it seems for how easy it actually is. I think it's all of the Jargon and 'add-ons' (schema and other related files) that scares people. I know I have the concept down, but when it comes to actually using the XML namespace, I start to get frustrated because I don't have all of the Jargon down, just the concepts. When nodes and elements go flying and I deviate from a tutorial in the slightest way, things stop working. :eek: So I figured I'd ask here. I forgot about xml serialization. Maybe I'll do up an easy to follow tutorial or something on it. Anyone know of any relatively simple ways to get into simple database style XML documents without going into the DataSet Object?

your ".dat" is just a fancy word for plain text file it looks like. If you want real capabilities for manipulating data without recreating the wheel, look into XML files. You'd just load your Favorites up like a database and delete a row if you didn't want it. But to effectively delete a row from a plain text file, you need to write over the existing data - without that line of data. If you read into a String Array, you have to write the file again, but without that index you don't want. Easier to do with a Collection or HashTable. Dim FavoritesHash as new HashTable FavoritesHash.add(key, object) so to add: FavoritesHash.add(FavoriteName, FavoriteAddress) to delete: FavoritesHash.delete(FavoriteName) then to write you do this: dim favorite as string ForEach favorite in FavoritesHash 'code to write line... something like: Write(favorite.key & " " & favorite.Value) 'Remember that .key is the name and .value is the object holding the html address End For many more ways to skin a cat :D

I feel kinda silly. I use them, I know how to make them... but the XML namespace is like the bermuda triangle for me :D Normally I create a dataset and use LoadXML/LoadSchema. Thats fine for a full database with multiple tables in xml. For a single table its a bit of overkill. You really just need a DataTable. .Net 2.0 has DataTable.Load(Read?)XML/Load(Read)Schema just like the DataSet has. Even a DataTable is overkill for just loading an XML ini file, that is just a bunch of keys with settings like so: <root1> <setting1></setting1> <setting2></setting2> <setting3></setting3> <setting4></setting4> <setting5></setting5> <setting6></setting6> <setting7></setting7> <setting8></setting8> <setting9></setting9> </root1> What is the best method to get at each of these keys to get the data? How about a very basic database type? without using a DataSet/Table, what is the easiest/best method for getting into this type? <root1> <data> <name></name> <date></date> <address></address> <phoneNumber></phoneNumber> </data> <data> <name></name> <date></date> <address></address> <phoneNumber></phoneNumber> </data> </root1> I think these answers would help to clarify how to better use XML for settings and basic data for everyone. Thank you :)

These are the responses I got from the Powers That Be when I asked the same question last week (about 4 posts below the one you just asked) here

Got it. Here is how to add your File to the Explorer Shell Context (popup/Right-Click) Menu: in your application, you can access this argument as a string with the following line of code: System.Environment.CommandLine If you want to do this with All Folders instead of applications, add your registry information to the "Folder" registry key rather than the *