Denaes

I remember in Java (or the IDE I was using in my Java class anyway) you could set a directory/s which were considered shared classes and would be available for you to code without importing them into your project. Handy, yes. But a huge pain in the if you're developing on more than one machine to make sure that you're synched up with the same classes.

I use 1280x800 on a widescreen monitor and I feel clausterphobic in VS.Net and Macromedia Studio. They all just have toolbars to the left and right, top and bottom... :eek: I have to "untack" everything to get more space.

I'll say I'm definately far from masterfull in all aspects OOP and class related, but I can make classes and do most of the basics. At least the book would give me some goals as to what I need to learn. All I know now is that I see someones OOP program and its like a fricking honeycomb of classes all half inheriting from each other and instantiantiating other classes within classes and I'm like "woah". Not that I can't follow whats going on. I can figure out where what procedure is, how to get it and how to use it. What I scratch my head at is how do I come to the conclusion that this application needs 12 seperate classes, and how do I come to the conclusion of how to best set them up? I just make a single class and put the procedures I'll use again in there. I'm starting to really see benefits of overloading procedures...

So I guess "Patterns" are what I'm looking for... That what the different organizations are called... patterns? Thanks for the tip. I think I'll pick that book up :)

I've found books on the technical aspects, but not on the theory and good OOP practices/techniques. Anyone know of a good book, a link, document or anything else that would help with building a good OOP technique?

When you're not in a particular forum, theres a box called "Programming Tips" First off, its not programming tips, but some news container. Secondly, most of it is technically spam. Its about macromedia and this is a .Net forum. Thirdly, I happen to like macromedia and I clicked the link to "Macromedia looks to extend Flash technology" as I love Flash. I was shuttled to some site called "The Industry Standard", which tells me: "You do not have access to view this story. This could be because you aren't a member of Internet Business News from The Industry Standard. Please become a member of Internet Business News from The Industry Standard to receive full membership access!" Whatever, I want to read the damn article so I become a member, accidently using my personal email account. I was still denied access to the article and I"m going to be flippin pissed if they sell my email or start sending me junk email.

I like it. Takes a little eye adjusting though. Quick replies and it seems that code can be placed into a textbox of sorts that allows scrolling and doesn't distort or overly elongate the post. My only annoyance is that I saw news links on the right, I clicked one and they were spam. They wanted to me to sign up to get the news, I signed up and still didn't get the news. But once its identified as spam, you know to avoid it :)

My books are all VB.Net 2002, and I learned on vb6. Thats handy. Does that keep i declared for the rest of the procedure, or just within the loop? Anywere you can get a list of 02->03 changes?

Whats the best practice for this? I've always heard that anything you want to use over and over, you create a class. Even if its just a single subroutine, start a class for it, then may end up adding more to it later. Of course this was tought to me in my OOP course on Java, not at all using VB.Net. Does VS.Net 2003 have any sort of way to save a single copy of classes? Can you designate a single directory as your "Class Vault"? One thing I know about classes, especially if they're evolving (you're debugging, updating, etc), you want one copy. You don't want to have 8 copies floating around. Maybe an origional and a working, but not more than that. So having the classes all in one directory seems the best practice. I'd assume the same would go with controls as well. Any control you create, you can compile into a .dll and throw it in your "Controls" directory. If you change it (add more functionality) then replace it. If you actually change procedures, you might want to provide overriden methods so that one app you're working on doesn't all of the sudden start working differently or get broken. Any opinions or thoughts on this practice? VS.Net have anything to help this out at all?

No, a class with custom events or a custom control seem to be the way to go. If you do a class on that, could you post it? I'm a bit sketchy on custom events and would love to see how you do it :)

When you bind you a datasource, the index (currency counter?) changes, which triggers an event. As far as I know, there isn't anything to trigger an event whenever a variable is changed. The best bet would be to have another textbox which isn't visible and use that as a variable to hold text. Then on the 'variable' textboxs' changetext event, set the text to your first textbox. Or if you want the variable to ALWAYS be the EXACT same as the textbox, just use the textbox.text instead of a string variable.

And from what I recall, a lot of people held off because the upgrade wasn't worth it to them. I think there were improvements with the C# side of things, but what new features were realling included? I think it was mostly bug fixes and upgrade to v1.1 of the framework. This new version looks much more severe.

Sure, I'd move the second post I explained though. It seems to be better explained step-by-step w/out jabbering :D

Ok, I just opened a new project and retested the steps to the process as you explained them. Step 1: Create Splitter1 (default align to left), Panel1 w/Textbox1 inside and Panel2 with Textbox2 inside. Step 2: Dock Panel1 to left. Panel1 will dock to the left, but Splitter1 will still be further left. This isn't were we want it. Step 3: R-Click on splitter and choose Bring to Front. This will cause it to reappear on the right of Panel1, which is were you really want it. Note: It may be hard to right click on it. It's small and looks near identical to the Panel1 border. If you have trouble, open your properties window (if not already opened) and choose Splitter1 on the top dropdown. Make it wider and/or visible. Step 4: Set Panel2's Dock property to fill and run application. If you run it now, Panel2 doesn't dock properly. You need to R-Click on Panel2 and Bring To Front. Test application again. That's the procedure I went through from start to finish on a fresh application. I know things are more hectic with Z-Orders and whatnot on a form you've been playing with for a while, but when all else fails, make sure you bring each panel and splitter to front. You can add further splits within the existing panels by duplicating the process, but entirely within one of the existing panels.

The thing I'm most worried about is that they're potentially making VB.Net a step backward towards vb6. So long as you can manually turn some of those options off, I think I'll upgrade.

VC++ (NOT using .Net in any way) is in theory faster than .Net currently, right? Also it can do more in depth things? So is this a valid way to speed up certain aspects of your .Net application, or even make it do things .Net normally won't? On a similar note, could you do the same with Assembler? I don't think I'd want to touch that language again, but still... its nice to know :)

Getting paid by the 'deliverable' is basically what I'm doing now. I guess I'm technically liscensed by one company to create software for another. But the sofware will be resalable. The only part I'm worried about is loosing close connection with said "middleman/salespeople" company (who are getting BY FAR more than I could get for this program, great salespeople) that they can continue to sell the program without giving me my %. I'm not giving them the sourcecode, but they could effectivly keep selling the program as is to new people without me knowing. How do you enforce a "per install" payment? Whats to stop someone from saying "Ok 100 per install" and then only getting one install, while actually getting 50 installs and handing them out to their friends? This is something important that I think we, as independant programmers, have to think about.

I heard Divil mention the new version is supposed to have better grid controls. When is this new version supposed to be out? Whats it going to add? It won't negate any of the .Net learning will it? I did a search and couldn't find anything. A link of info would be greatly appreciated :)

Is the error I get when I try to "Bind DB" pointed at the line of code in bold: /// <summary> Bind to DataSet </summary> private void btnBDB_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { this.dsNames1.Clear(); this.oleDbDataAdapter1.Fill(this.dsNames1); [b]multiCombo1.SetDataBindings(dsNames1, "Contacts", "LastName, FirstName");[/b] listBox1.DataSource = dsNames1; listBox1.DisplayMember = "Contacts.FirstName"; } Yes, I can access the MultiCombo namespace through the code and through object browser. Is there supposed to be a MultiCombo on the screen, or is it supposed to be created via code?

This would be useful and something that I'd need for a project I'm working on... but I can't get your project to work. I got it running (shoulda made the connection with code and used Application.StartupPath + "\Database.mdb"), but when I do things, I get an error. I have 3 labels, with two buttons below each label, a create and bind button. Then unbind below those three. A listbox to the right and a pause button on the bottom. Is there supposed to be a MultiItemCombo on the screen somewere? I see a MultiCombo.cs file. Is that the sourcecode for the control? Did you compile the control and add the .dll?

This is a little mini tutorial for splitting the screen up while still alowing anchored (not docked) controls by using docked panels instead. I hadn't really seen any tutorials on this, but a few questions. I made my two screens by laying down two panel controls onto the Form. I placed the "Left Screen" controls in the left panel and the "Right Screen controls in the right panel. Then I threw down a Splitter which was docked to the left. I docked my left panel to the left as well. This placed the entire panel to the left of the splitter control. As Divil said in a post, a common problem is the Z-Ordering. I had to bring the two panels to the front by right clicking on them and choosing "Bring to Front". The right panel I docked to full screen. Now this allows me to have two screens on my form (right and left). The controls inside of the form, I can Anchor to sides of the form. This lets you slide the splitter back and forth and allows the controls inside to resize. Its that simple. To make it a triple pane window, I added two more panels inside of the left panel, then a splitter that split across the left panel docked to the top. I might have to make a few more splits in the left panel for what I'm doing, but its not too hard. If you think you can explain it better, please do. ::cough::Divil::cough:: Also, if I got anything wrong, well that definately needs fixing :) Other than that, I hope this helps people with their paneled window needs :D

Yes, and he's an individual and more professional than quite a few companies (non-individuals) that I've seen

IE gets absurd in terms of ram. I can't think of why IE should take up between 30 and 120 mb of ram... just sometimes I have to close all the windows and reopen them to free up memory.

On that note, any useful controls. I can think of dozens of controls that I'd want to speed things up, flex grid type controls being one major one lacking from vs.net. C1 has some you can download for free, but they have two flexgrid controls, which crossover in functionality. The classic does most of the things I need, but the advanced won't do some of the really basic things, but does more advanced things. Whatever you do, if you do a control, do good documentation with it. I think Divil is an example of how an individual can do things professionally.

Ironically, if you're a good salesman (or you know one) there are many absurd ideas that would make bucks. Scheduling, medical billing... I'm doing some of that now as a sort of independant contractor for a small company which finds people who want the software. Once a version is done, we just remodify it and resell it as needed. The first sell is pretty much breakeven and after that is gravy.