Archives

Archives / 2003

  • Lack of updates...

    No Comments

    Haven't updated in a while. My time has been spent in tech design at work (not much coding) and enjoying the holidays with my family. Hopefully, everyone else is having a good time too!

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  • Unit Testing Abstract classes

    5 Comments

    Opinions wanted: How do you write unit tests for abstract (MustInherit in VB.NET) classes? Do you derive a simple class off your abstract class in your unit test assembly? Or do you just write unit tests for the derived classes? Hmmm.....

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  • Find all SQL Identity columns

    6 Comments

    I had a need today to find all columns in a SQL database that were identity columns (across all tables). Thanks to SQL's system tables, it was a breeze:

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  • Technology Backlash!

    1 Comment

    I don't know what's going on here. First, I have a hard-drive crash that takes a bunch of data with it. I actually took it to one of those data recovery places. It was $95 to look it over, but then it would be anywhere from $1300 - $2500 to fix it. Yikes! No way I could justify spending that kind of money. But I forked over the $95 because I was curious as to what went wrong. A few days later they called with the verdict: It's dead. Totally dead. No recovery possible -- which they said is rare these days to see this kind of crash. At least this way, I don't need to agonize over the decision that spending the money could recover the data...

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  • New .NET Aggregator

    1 Comment

    Haven't fired up SharpReader the whole weekend so I don't know if anyone else has blogged this, but there's a new .NET-based aggregator that integrates with Outlook 2003/XP (like Newsgator). This one is free and I think I'll try it out to see how I like it. It's called intraVnews.

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  • SpamBayes Rocks!

    2 Comments

    Based on positive comments from someone else (can't find the link right now), I downloaded and installed SpamBayes for Outlook. Two words: It rocks! It's easy to install and get running. One thing to note if you're considering using this for SPAM: It needs to be trained on what is SPAM and what isn't. If you think you *might* try SpamBayes some day, then save your SPAM in a folder. When (if) you ever do try SpamBayes, you can point it to that folder and it will help the training process go much quicker.

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  • DVD Burner

    1 Comment

    I've been researching DVD RW drives for quite a while now. Waiting for the price to hit the right spot. A number of $130 - $150 range brands have been showing up in the weekend ads (CompUSA, BestBuy, OfficeDepot, etc...) I had been eyeing the I/O Magic for a while. I had found a few positive reviews on the drive across the Internet and Circuit City had them on sale this week for $139.

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  • Plink!

    2 Comments

    We've all read about this. Maybe even it's happened to you. The hard drive crash. I got my first 10MB hard-drive back in the "old" days (1990?) and hooked it up to my Atari ST. In the past 13 years I've only had one hard drive go bad, and that was simply an over-heating problem. Maxtor promptly sent me a new drive out and I've been good ever since. Until this past weekend...

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  • No COM+ Statistics?

    1 Comment

    For an exercise, I whipped up a simple little object that would be poolable in COM+

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  • The Bitmap class is NOT a paint program

    1 Comment

    I needed to convert a bitmap to an icon. After discovering Paint Shop Pro didn't support this (seemed odd to me), I thought I'd just quickly write up a three line .NET app to convert a bitmap to an icon.

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  • Top Blogger.

    No Comments

    I've enjoyed every single one of Raymond Chen's posts. His blog is one of the most informative and interesting -- and they make great history lessons! Kudos to Raymond!

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  • Sharpening my skills.

    3 Comments

    I've been a VB programmer for a long time. Therefore, I took to VB.NET pretty easily. I can pound out code pretty quickly in VB.NET, and I'm familiar enough with C# syntax that I can read C# code fluently. But the past year at my current job has involved a little bit of Java coding. Curly braces and semi-colons don't scare me, although I'm not a big fan of case-sensitivity. I've done a little bit of C# coding here and there, but I mainly use VB.NET.

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  • Converting GMT dates

    3 Comments

    I have a DB2 database giving me a date in GMT format and I need to convert it to my local timezone. The .NET TimeZone class makes this sooooo easy:

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  • Microsoft will *NOT* send you a critical update.

    2 Comments

    Most of you reading this post already know this, but Microsoft will not send you a personal email with a critical update. I've been flooded with about 20 of these today. They are very authentic looking -- they resemble the Microsoft home page, same layout, fonts, trademark and copyright notices, the works. But the attachment is just another virus/worm.

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  • GANG Meeting

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    Had a great GANG meeting tonight. Bob Crosley from Wise Solutions discussed "Deployment nightmares: How poor software deployments destroy schedules, projects and your customer's computer". He also demo'd Wise for Visual Studio.NET and it looked slick! It integrates directly into the IDE as a new project type and has a ton of nice point-and-click options. It also supports some complex stuff like database installs, virtual directory creation, GAC install and even nGen on the client. Nice.

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  • The next VB.NET

    1 Comment

    David McNamee has a great preview of some of the changes coming in the Whibey version of VB.NET. It's great to see some of these things now being demo'd to the public. I've seen many of the things he posted about previously, but was under NDA and couldn't discuss. Since it's now been shown publically, I'd like to add a quick comment to one of David's observations on aligning controls:

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  • Interesting...

    4 Comments

    From a DOTNET-CLR post: An interesting feature of MSIL that is not currently exposed in any of the languages -- "method overload based on return type only." Very interesting!

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  • Withdrawl...

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    Only two postings in August? Ugh... I've been so busy with work (non-.NET stuff...) and home stuff. Haven't done any .NET stuff in a few weeks. I am jonesing to do some .NET stuff. Need to find more time in the day...

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  • The work we produce

    1 Comment

    A nice snippet from Scoble:

    You know what's different about Microsoft? S&&t doesn't fly here. You try to put lipstick on a pig and people will call you on it. That hasn't always happened elsewhere in my career.
    *sigh*... I wish more tech companies worked this way. Does anyone still wonder why Microsoft is #1?

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  • Turn off 'Hide Advanced Members'!

    1 Comment

    I'm not sure why this is a default option for VB.NET, but if you look at VS.NET's options for VB.NET (Tools, Options, Text Editor, Basic) there's an entry "Hide Advanced Members". It's turned on by default. According to the docs:

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  • Another Kudos!

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    I don't want to sound like a broken record (since many others have praised Scott and his work), but the new interface is really nice!  I still miss my WYSIWYG preview from Bloggar, but this is a great improvement.  And I love the new styles!  Thanks Scott!

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  • Inheriting Constructors

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    An interesting thread on inheriting constructors, which .NET -- along with Java and C++ -- don't do. If you want all the same constructors as your base class, you need to add code for them.

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  • NGEN *still* requires the IL.

    No Comments

    While many people who are "into" .NET may already know this, I still see this come up in the Microsoft newsgroups from time to time. People read a little about NGEN and how it produces a native executable and they think they're in the clear (i.e. don't need to worry about the .NET framework or ILDASM). This is not true. Eric Gunnerson pointed this out in a newsgroup post a couple of years ago. It bears repeating:

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  • VB.NET and DirectCast

    No Comments

    Paul Vick: "...as it turns out, there are some narrow situations where using DirectCast can make things a tiny bit fast than they might otherwise be."

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  • VB6, Variants and COM-Interop

    2 Comments

    Ran into an interesting issue with COM-interop and Variants. In VB6, I had a "Value" Property that was of type 'Variant'. While I loathe variants, it really was required for this project since it could hold all sorts of data. Since it could hold anything, this "Value" property had a "Property Get", "Property Set" and "Property Let". I needed to use this interface in a .NET class so I used TLBIMP.EXE and get a runtime-callable-wrapper (RCW).

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  • Update on Exit Try

    No Comments

    Just wanted to clarify a few things based on comments to my original post on the "Exit Try" issue:

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  • Beware "Exit Try"!

    5 Comments

    Brad Abrams' recent post about the IL code generated by the C# compiler reminded me of an issue that someone found with the VB.NET "Exit Try" statement. I thought I'd post it here to make sure all three of my subscribers know about this... :)

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  • Case-sensitive websites

    4 Comments

    I've never understood why you would want a case-sensitive webserver. ScotG's blog recently mentioned his purchase of an iSight. Since I don't follow Apple hardware (nor Apple in general) I clicked on his link to the iSight, http://www.apple.com/iSight. I got to an Apple page about it being an invalid link. So I went to Apple's product pages and saw a link to the iSight. I clicked on the linked and when it popped up in my browser, the URL looked like the same one ScotG had in his blog. I went back and double-checked his blog entry: iSight vs. isight.

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  • Unit Testing with JUnit

    2 Comments

    No -- that's not a typo: "JUnit" (not NUnit). At my current job (which is usually VB6/SQL/Oracle development) I've had to do some Java coding. For someone familiar with .NET, it's not too bad.

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  • Let go of my assembly!

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    As noted earlier, I'm using FxCop for the first time today. So I've got FxCop up with it's results, I'm doing ALT-TAB back and forth to clean up some of the easier things. Now I want to re-build and re-analyze but FxCop has my assembly locked. No biggie, I'll start up a new FxCop project and re-build. Still locked. I had to shut down FxCop before I could rebuild.

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  • VB.NET and FxCop 1.21

    3 Comments

    I played around with FxCop for the first time today -- very cool app! One thing that is very annoying for VB.NET developers: If you turn on automatic "code reformatting" in VS.NET, the "Set" clause of a Property statement is generated as:

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  • VB.NET vs. C#

    2 Comments

    No -- I'm not starting another language war. I was converting some C# code to VB.NET today. After getting everything converted, I had to change the name of the class (nothing to do with the conversion). I changed it and then thought "shoot -- now I need to change all of the constuctors" (it has three overloaded constructors). Then I remembered I'm in VB.NET and all of the constructors are named "New" -- no changes required.

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  • VB.NET documentation bug with 'Throw'

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    I've notified Microsoft of a small bug in the VB.NET documentation.  For the 'Throw Statement', the documentation says the expression part of the statement is required:

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  • A little off topic...

    2 Comments

    Apologies for the slightly off-topic post.  I haven't been posting much because I've been home helping my wife out with our newborn!  She's a beauty and her older sisters adore her.

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  • VS.NET and editing Resx files

    3 Comments

    Am I missing something or is it really true that the built-in resource editor in VS.NET only supports strings? I can't find anyway to put binary files (for example, a bitmap) into a ResX in VS.NET's resource editor. Thankfully, there's Lutz Roeder's Resourcer.

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  • VB.NET: Under The Covers

    2 Comments

    Being a curious kind of guy, I decided to look into some of the features unique to VB.NET.  A combination of some VB.NET code, ILDASM and Anakrino and my questions were answered!

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  • Static Local Variables in VB.NET

    4 Comments

    VB.NET has support for "local static variables". These are variables local to a method, but retain their method call between invocations of the method. The CLR does not support this, so how does VB.NET do it if it runs under the CLR? Just some simple compiler tricks!

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  • Catching Windows messages

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    I needed to capture mouse clicks before my windows app got a hold of them.  Seeing that the Form class has a PreProcessMessage method I thought I was all set.  As the documentation stated:

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  • Moving a form by clicking anywhere on it.

    2 Comments

    You've seen applications that allow you to move the form around by simply clicking anywhere on the form (not just the caption bar). Can you do this in .NET? Yes! And it's very easy. All you have to do is handle the proper windows message and the rest is easy. 

    Option Strict On
Option Explicit On

    
Imports System
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports System.Drawing

    
Public Class Form1
    Inherits Form

    
    Private Declare Function ReleaseCapture Lib "user32" () As Long
    Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal wMsg As Integer, ByVal wParam As Integer, ByVal lParam As Integer) As Integer

    
    Private Const WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN  As Integer = &HA1
    Private Const HTCAPTION         As Integer = 2

    
    Public Sub New()
        Me.Text = "Drag anywhere to move"
        AddHandler Me.MouseDown, AddressOf frmMain_MouseDown
    End Sub

    
    <STAThread()> _
    Shared Sub Main()
        Application.Run(New Form1())
    End Sub

    
    Private Sub frmMain_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs)
        'Don't drag the sceen if it is the right button or the wheel.
        If e.Button = MouseButtons.Left Then
            ReleaseCapture()
            SendMessage(Me.Handle, WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN, HTCAPTION, 0)
        End If

    
    End Sub

    
End Class

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  • Browsing for a folder (1.0)

    4 Comments

    Still using the .NET 1.0 framework and need a "browse for folder" dialog? You'll need to resort to platform invoke (p/invoke) using the Win32 API's. Here's a class that encapsulates all of it.

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  • Pulling a bitmap off the clipboard.

    No Comments

    Here's an example of pulling a bitmap off the clipboard and displaying it in a windows form.

    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On 

    Imports System
    Imports System.Windows.Forms
    Imports System.Drawing

    Public Class WinApp
            Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

            Private m_PB As PictureBox

        <STAThread()> _
            Shared Sub Main()
            Application.Run(    New WinApp())
            End Sub

        Public Sub New()
                Me.Text = "This is my form"
            m_PB = New PictureBox()
            m_PB.Location =     New Point(0, 0)
            m_PB.Size =     Me.Size

            m_PB.Image = GetImageFromClipboard()
                If Not m_PB.Image Is Nothing Then
                Me.ClientSize = New Size(m_PB.Image.Width, m_PB.Image.Height)
                m_PB.Size =     Me.ClientSize
                End If

            Me.Controls.Add(m_PB)
            End Sub

        Public Function GetImageFromClipboard() As Image
                If Not Clipboard.GetDataObject() Is Nothing Then
                Dim dobj As IDataObject = Clipboard.GetDataObject()
                    If dobj.GetDataPresent(DataFormats.Bitmap) Then
                    Dim img_obj As Object = dobj.GetData(DataFormats.Bitmap)
                        Return CType(img_obj, Bitmap)
                    End If
            End If
        End Function

    End     Class

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  • Adjusting to life without ItemData

    7 Comments

    In VB6, the ListBox and ComboBox controls had the ItemData property. This was a “companion” list of long integers which could be used to store additional information related to an Item. For example, you could display a list of individuals in a ListBox and keep their age in the ItemData property:

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  • Creating an image from a URL.

    5 Comments

    This example shows how you can download and create an Image based on a URL. 

    Option Strict On
Option Explicit On

    
Imports System
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO

    
Public Class WinApp
   Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

    
   <STAThread()> _
   Shared Sub Main
      Application.Run(new WinApp())
   End Sub

       
   Dim m_pb As PictureBox

       
   Public Sub New
      Me.Text = "This is my form"

          
      m_pb = new PictureBox()
      m_pb.Location = new Point(0,0)
      
      m_pb.Image = GetURL("http://radio.weblogs.com/0110109/images/dotnet.gif")
      m_pb.Size = m_pb.Image.Size
      Me.ClientSize = m_pb.Image.Size

          
      Me.Controls.add(m_pb)
   End Sub

       
   Private Function GetURL(url as String) As Bitmap
      Dim wc     As WebClient = new WebClient()
      Dim strm   As Stream = wc.OpenRead(url)
      Dim bmp    As BitMap = new Bitmap(strm)

          
      strm.Close()
      Return bmp
   End Function

          
End Class

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  • Enumerate Network Adapters

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    This sample enumerates all of the installed network adapters to reveal such information as MAC address, IP Address, IP Subnet, etc...

    '
    ' base on C# code originally posted by Willy Denoyette
    ' http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=eeeD%24NrxAHA.2188%40tkmsftngp02
    '
    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On

    Imports     System
    Imports System.Management

    Public Class ConsoleApp

           Shared Sub Main
          Network.EnumNetworkAdapters()
           End Sub
       
    End Class
       
    Public Class Network
           Public Shared Sub EnumNetworkAdapters()
              Dim query as ManagementObjectSearcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration")
              Dim queryCollection as ManagementObjectCollection  = query.Get()
              Dim mo as ManagementObject
              Dim s as String
          
              for each mo in queryCollection
               Console.WriteLine(     "'{0}'", mo.ClassPath)
               Console.WriteLine(     "'{0}'", mo.Options)
               Console.WriteLine(     "Index   '{0}'", mo("Index"))
               Console.WriteLine(     "Description   '{0}'", mo("Description"))
               Console.WriteLine(     "MacAddress   '{0}'", mo("MacAddress"))
               
                   if(CType(mo("IPEnabled"), Boolean) = true)
                       dim addresses() as string = CType(mo("IPAddress"), String())
                       dim subnets() as string = CType(mo("IPSubnet"), String())
                   
                   Console.WriteLine(     "DNS Host   '{0}'", mo("DNSHostName"))
                   Console.WriteLine(     "DNS Domain   '{0}'", mo("DNSDomain"))
                   
                       for each s in addresses
                       Console.WriteLine(     "IP Address   '{0}'", s)
                       next
                   
                       for each s in subnets
                       Console.WriteLine(     "IP Subnet   '{0}'", s)
                       next
               end if
          next
       End Sub
    End     Class

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  • OPML Swapping

    1 Comment

    Something I just noticed: If you've got a bunch of subscriptions in RSS Bandit and want to play around with SharpReader, the OPML format exported by RSS Bandit is not immediately usable by SharpReader.  I'm not up on the OPML format so I don't know which program is at fault, but there's a simple fix:

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  • Using VB.NET Objects in regular ASP Pages

    No Comments

    Using a VB.NET object in an ASP page can be accomplished with COM-Interop. While the whole interop mechanism can be complex depending on what you want to do, below is a basic example that should get you started.

    1. Create a file called Class1.vb and placed this code in it:

    Public Class SampleClass

    Public Function GetMyName() As String

        Return "This is from the .NET component"

    End Function

End Class


    2. Create a keyfile with the strong name (sn) utility:
    sn -k demokey.snk
    3. Compile the VB app with:
    vbc /t:library /keyfile:demokey.snk class1.vb
    4. Install the library into the GAC with:
    gacutil -i class1.dll
    5. Use RegAsm to register it as a COM class:
    regasm /tlb:class1.tlb class1.dll
    Test it in ASP with:

    <%
    set x = server.CreateObject("SampleClass")
    response.Write x.GetMyName()
    %>

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  • RSS Bandit Comments

    2 Comments

    Now that's I've dumped Radio, I'm looking for a news aggregator.  I worked a little with RSS Bandit this morning.  A nice little app.  A few things I'd like to see:

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  • URL Encoding in Windows Forms

    No Comments

    If you need to do some URL encoding in a Windows Forms app, the HttpUtility class has a shared (static) method to URL encode a string. Below is a sample.

    NOTE: The HttpUtility class also contains a shared (static) HTML encoder too!

    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On

    Imports     System
    Imports System.Windows.Forms
    Imports System.Drawing
    Imports System.Web

    Public Class WinApp
            Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

            private m_url as TextBox

        <STAThread()> _
            Shared Sub Main
            Application.Run(    new WinApp())
            End Sub

        Public Sub New
            Me.Text = "URL Test"

            m_url = New TextBox()
            m_url.Size =     new Size(280,30)
            m_url.Location =     new point (5,5)

            Controls.Add(m_url)
            m_url.Text =     "http://www.microsoft.com?value="; & HttpUtility.UrlEncode("encode me please")
            End Sub

    End     Class

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  • Getting RTF Text off the clipboard.

    No Comments

    Need to get RTF text off the clipboard? Use the IDataObject interface to see if there is RTF data on the clipboard. In the sample below, copy some RTF data onto the clipboard from another application then simply click anywhere on this form to see the actual RTF string data.

    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On

    Imports     System
    Imports System.Windows.Forms
    Imports System.Drawing
    Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic

    Public Class Form1
            Inherits Form

            Public Sub New()
                Me.Text = "Clipboard Test"
            AddHandler Me.Click, AddressOf MouseClick
            End Sub

        Public Sub MouseClick(byval sender As object, byval e As EventArgs)
                If Not Clipboard.GetDataObject() Is Nothing
                Dim dobj As IDataObject = Clipboard.GetDataObject()
                    If dobj.GetDataPresent(DataFormats.RTF) then
                    Dim rtfobj As Object = dobj.GetData(DataFormats.RTF)
                    MsgBox(rtfobj.ToString())
                    End if
            End if
        End Sub

        <STAThread()> _
            Shared Sub Main()
            Application.Run(    New Form1())
            End Sub
    End     Class

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  • Detecting a click on the caption bar.

    2 Comments

    Need to detect a click on the caption bar? You can easily intercept the required windows message (WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN).

    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On

    Imports     System
    Imports System.Windows.Forms
    Imports System.Drawing

    Public Class Form1
            Inherits Form

            Private ReadOnly WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN As Integer = &HA1

            Public Sub New()
                Me.Text = "Window Caption"
        End Sub

        Protected Overrides Sub WndProc(ByRef m As Message)
                If m.msg = WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN Then
                Console.WriteLine("caption click...")
                End if
            MyBase.WndProc(m)
            End Sub

        <STAThread()> _
            Shared Sub Main()
            Application.Run(    New Form1())
            End Sub
    End     Class

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  • Create and display a form based on its Name

    1 Comment

    This sample uses Reflection to create a form using only the name stored in a string. While the technology can do way more than what is presented in this example, this will give you a basic start. Note that in this example, an instance of Form2 is created and shown based only on the string "Form2" when the main form is clicked on.

    Option Strict On
    Option     Explicit On

    Imports     System
    Imports System.Windows.Forms
    Imports System.Drawing

    Public Class Form1
            Inherits Form

            Public Sub New()
                Me.Text = "Main Form"
            AddHandler Me.Click, AddressOf FormClick
            End Sub

        Public Sub FormClick(byval sender As Object, byval e As Eventargs)
                Dim myType As Type = Type.GetType("Form2")
                Dim myForm As Form

                Dim newForm As Object = Activator.CreateInstance(myType)
            myForm =     CType(newForm, Form)
            myForm.Show()
            End Sub

        <STAThread()> _
            Shared Sub Main()
            Application.Run(    New Form1())
            End Sub
    End     Class

    Public     Class Form2
            Inherits Form

            Public Sub New()
                Me.Text = "Second Form"
        End Sub
    End     Class

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