Entries tagged with visual basic - Channel 8

Get your hands dirty: Introduction to Visual Basic 2008

Lean — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Did you get your software from DreamSpark? Here you have a tutorial on how to use it. Mario (MSP) gave us an introduction to Visual Basic, how to build applications and start coding right away. And here are samples... Enjoy!

Language(s): English

Product(s): Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2005

Duration: 50 Minutes

Author: Mario Meir-Huber

Material para Células e qualquer pessoa que está começando!

Guerra — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:27:00 GMT

Pessoal,

Estava eu revisando o conteudo do MSDN Wiki Brasil (no qual sou um dos moderadores) e me deparei com esse tópico Programação com objetos: Usando classes, ai pensei, "poxa que excelente material para quem está começando! e o melhor , de graça!!!"
Uma vez o amigo André Furtado estava falando disso, sabe de pararmos um pouco de gerar conteudo e começarmos a buscar os existentes! Me lembrei dessa frase dele porque vejo muita gente tentando "reinventar a roda" em vez de colaborar com conteudo existente... tipo esse do MSDN Wiki! Como é no formato Wiki qualquer pessoa pode colaborar e ajudar! Então o que esta esperando para mostrar isso para sua Célula ou Grupo de Usuários? Vamos COLABORAR e pensar no COLETIVO!
Então se você quer contribuir e colaborar com a COMUNIDADE veja esse material, divulgue esse material, colabore com esse material!

Abraços,
Ricardo Guerra Freitas

Visual Basic 9 and Silverlight

littleguru — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:26:00 GMT

Mario (a student partner from Austria) wrote an article on how to start with Silverlight 2.0 (1.1 has been renamed to 2.0, for those who are confused right now). The article is really nice and I thought it is worth to post it here on Channel 8:

Visual Basic 9 and Silverlight
Silverlight is a very interesting Technology. Version 2.0 (1.1 got renamed to 2.0, for those who are confused now) is now available as Alpha Release, which enables developers to built Silverlight-Web applications with Visual Basic (and Visual Studio). To use Silverlight with Visual Basic, you need to install Silverlight 2.0 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008. When the environment is set up, you can create a new Silverlight Project. First, you will see some files in the Project Folder.

The most important Files are Page.xaml and Page.xaml.vb. Page.xaml the Design-File which Contains XML-Markup Code XAML. The second file is the Codefile.
Initially, we create a TextBlock and a Rectangle in our Designfile (page.xaml).

Both Elements need a name because we want to access them from the source code. This is only possible with a name. Width and Height are easy to set. If we want to set the Top and Left Property, we need the “Canvas.Top” and “Canvas.Left” Property. To Fill an Element we need a Color. If we want to have a GradientBrush, we need to GradientStop-Elements with an offset and a color for each element.

Now we can access our elements directly from the source code.

First, we change the Mouse cursor, when we move over the TextBlock-Control. This works with the Cursor-Property.

Public Sub Page_Loaded(ByVal o As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
' Required to initialize variables
InitializeComponent()
Text.Cursor = Cursors.Hand
End Sub

After that, we look at the Events. We could easily change the Fill-Property with one line of code:

Private Sub Text_MouseEnter(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Input.MouseEventArgs) Handles Text.MouseEnter
Rect.Fill = New SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(255, 100, 100, 255))
End Sub

If the Mouse cursor is placed over the TextBlock-control we set a new SolidColorBrush.

But the SolidColorBrush looks a bit boring, right? Well, let us have a LinearGradientBrush! The only thing we need is a new LinearGradientBrush with two GradientStops. The GradientStops needs the Color and Position. But we set this for the “MouseLeave” event, because we want a fancy mouseover effect.

Private Sub Text_MouseLeave(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Text.MouseLeave
Dim gb As New LinearGradientBrush
Dim g1, g2 As New GradientStop
g1.Color = Color.FromArgb(255, 100, 255, 100)
g1.Offset = 0
g2.Color = Color.FromArgb(255, 255, 255, 100)
g2.Offset = 1
gb.GradientStops.Add(g1)
gb.GradientStops.Add(g2)
Rect.Fill = gb
End Sub

Last but not least we want to use an animation. We need to define the animation in the XAML-File (well, we could also create one in VB-Code, but XAML is ways cooler;P). We will place the Animation in a new Element „Canvas.Resources“. We could also place the Animation (“Storyboard”) in an Event trigger. There are several ways for animations;). For the Animation we need a Storyboard (just like in a movie). As we want to use this animation in our source code, we set the x:Name attribute. The animation itself uses a DoubleAnimation. The TargetName-Attribute indicates the Object to be animated, TargetProperty the Property. We also need to set the duration an the From and To-Attributes.

<Canvas.Resources>
<Storyboard x:Name="Animate" >
<DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="Rect" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Width" Duration="00:00:01" From="100" To="200" />
</Storyboard>
</Canvas.Resources>

Now we can easily execute the Animation – also with one single line of code.

Private Sub Text_MouseLeftButtonDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Input.MouseEventArgs) Handles Text.MouseLeftButtonDown
Animate.Begin()
Text.Text = "Hey! Silverlight rocks!"
End Sub

By the way, the second one changes the Text.

You can download the Silverlight tools for Visual Studio from here.

The future of VB.NET

littleguru — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

At the IT conference “TechEd Developers” we had the Chance to talk to Amanda Silver, the Senior Program Manager Lead for Visual Basic and Jay Schmelzer, the Principal Group Program Manager for Visual Basic.

First, we asked what are the strength of Visual Basic. Amanda replied that Visual Basic code is much more readable then other program languages’s code. This means that the code is easier to maintain. Furthermore, the IntelliSense experience has improved in the 2008 Version of Visual Studio. Directly connected to this we asked where Visual Basic will stand in the Future. We focused on positioning of Visual Basic against C# or Java. Amanda highlighted the XML Integration, which is one of the best features of the 9.0 version of Visual Basic. XML is a fist-class data type and Visual Basic becomes a XSLT language. There is also LinQ to XML, which is really powerful. Jay said that Visual Basic 9 is very productive and you can work task-oriented.

Next, we stated that Visual Basic code takes longer to type. Jay and Amanda told us that the IntelliSense has improved a lot and the long typing isn’t really long now. Furthermore we stated that we miss some of the Features Visual Basic offers in C#.

Another interesting technology is Silverlight. Most of the potential Silverlight developers are used to ActionScript in Flash, which is rather similar to JavaScript and JavaScript itself seems to be rather similar to C# - so we wanted to know where they see possibilities for VB in that sector. Amanda explained that maybe the only similarities in C# with ActionScript are the curly brace and the semicolon. Visual Basic supports a lot of interesting features in Silverlight like the event handling, which is much more confortable then in C#, because there is no necessity for Delegates. However, Developers have to find out which language they want to use.

After that we switched to the Micro Framework. Often it looks like Visual Basic would simply be left out there. Here we wanted to know why this is so. According to Amanda, there are some technical limitations that stop Visual Basic from easy adaption for the Micro Framework. The Problem is that Visual Basic is a Hybrid Language and some runtime Components are associated with it. In the 2005 release, the compiler would simply crash if this runtime is not present. Now, in the 2008 Release, the fault tolerance of the compiler was increased and the Compiler will tell that the Application wants to use a language feature of Visual Basic, which is simply not present in the Micro Framework. So it is not possible to use that language Feature.

Next we talked about XNA, which is a very interesting tool. We wanted to know if we can also expect to develop our XNA-Games with Visual Basic in the future. Jay said that it is a similar problem we are facing now with the Micro Framework. There are still some technical limitations, but as XNA is now moving towards Visual Studio 2008, they are working on this issue.

As Visual Basic is very important for Office Development, we asked Amanda and Jay what we can expect from Visual Basic in this Sector. There are the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) and VB for Applications (VBA). First it looked like VSTO would replace VBA, now it rather looks like VSTO and VBA would work together. Jay replied that the VSTO and VBA are different. VSTO gives us the ability to built an application based on Office, whereas VBA is about automating Office. They promised us that some pretty exciting stuff will come up, but they cannot talk about this at this time. According to the VSTO, we asked how the Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) comes together with Visual Basic. Jay said that VSTA gives us the ability to customize applications. This is a bit more heavy weighted then VBA is.

As we were also talking about the Future of Visual Basic, we wanted to find out what language facts we can expect in the next release of Visual Basic, that one that comes after Visual Basic 9. Jay said that we can expect something that is even more productive and fun. Amanda said that improving the language and the possibility to write less code is one of the most important facts.

The last question was what they can recommend to the community. Jay encouraged us to get involved in the developments, talk to folks about Visual Basic. Amanda said that it is important to sample code. The more sample code there is, the easier it is for new developers to get into Visual Basic.

The Interview was moderated by Alexander Duggleby and Mario Meir-Huber.

Visual Studio Express 2008 Beta 2

littleguru — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 05:12:00 GMT

Are you interested in programming for the Windows platform or even the web application via ASP.NET? Microsoft has released the Beta 2 of their Express Editions. The best is that they cost $0. They are completely free and may be even used in commercial products. I have also used them in some courses for my university work because they were free and I did want to develop in C#. The only problem is that the stand-alone installers are quite big: 400+ megabytes are a lot when you are on a dial-in.

The Express Editions are available for several .NET languages, such as Visual Basic 2008, Visual C# 2008, Visual C++ 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008. Visual C++ Express allows for the first time (speaking of an Express Edition) to develop native Windows applications. Native Windows applications are applications that run without the .NET framework.

Each Express Edition can be installed side-by-side with the older 2005 versions or any other Visual Studio installation. Everything will just work.

If you have some free time, try them out. Problems and bugs that might be in the beta versions should be reported to Microsoft. They are usually very fast in providing answers. I have installed the Beta 2 on my computer and it seems to be very solid. The .NET Framework (version 3.5) that comes with the Beta 2 has also a go-live license. That means you can legally publish and distribute applications that are building upon .NET 3.5 Beta 2.

For more information about what has been changed in the Express Editions have a look at the series that Dan Fernandez started at his blog.

You are a novice programmer? You need introduction to the tools? Have a look at the “Beginner Developer Learning Center”. It’s a great resource for beginners, who are interested in Windows and Web programming.

Another interesting toolkit for the hobbyist programmers is the “Coding4Fun Developer Kit 2008 Vol.1”. It is a collection of tools that provides a set of drag ’n drop controls and components that enable rapid development of hobbyists. Another example is the Facebook Developer Toolkit, which is a set of controls and components that provide Visual Basic and C# wrappers for the Facebook API that allow you to easily and quickly develop .NET applications that you can share with your Facebook friends.