Windows XP offers a much-improved method to subclass windows. Is it the right call for you to make?
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 07/16/2009
64-bit-capable machines are everywhere. It's time you start thinking about 64-bit support as you develop your Visual Basic applications.
- By Bill McCarthy
- 07/01/2009
Is the open source IDE for cross-platform .NET development a viable alternative to Visual Studio 2008?
- By Krystyna Rosicka-Blonska
- 07/01/2009
Visual Studio Magazine gives a rundown of AVIcode's Intercept uX, Mykonos' 1.0 AJAX security framework, and Borland's TeamDefine.
- By Michael Desmond
- 07/01/2009
There's only one add-in that I have auto-loaded every time I fire up the Classic VB IDE. After disappearing from the market, it's back now, and it's free!
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 06/15/2009
Need to recreate that olde-timey Terminal look? There's a stock object built into every version of Windows that'll serve that need.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 06/02/2009
As applications take flight beyond the desktop, the .NET Framework is trying to keep pace. The programming environment, which debuted in 2002 and today ships with Windows, SQL Server and Visual Studio, remains the consistent foundation for Microsoft's proliferating toolsets.
- By Kathleen Richards
- 06/02/2009
Here's the least complicated method for determining how long a given process has been running or how much CPU time it's actually consumed. This technique is used here to establish how long Windows has been running.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 05/05/2009
Need to extract binary data from the registry? Here's a quick primer on reading and interpreting structures stored there.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 04/20/2009
Aligning SQL in the cloud to SQL on the ground is about more than just common sense. It's about getting things done.
- By Andrew J. Brust
- 04/01/2009
When it comes to our understanding of Unicode issues, the "Born in the USA!" chant (no matter how you feel about The Boss) can almost amount to a proclamation of cultural ignorance.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 03/23/2009
Most of the time it doesn't matter where the user puts your application's windows, but every now and then you really need to know -- or even decide this for yourself.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 03/02/2009
Taking a careful look at the capabilities the compiler gives to anonymous types provides an excellent tutorial on what you should consider when you create your types -- including whether they are classes or structs.
Create a custom tool to provide a flexible and easy way to generate code on demand.
While moving code backward is nice, what really matters is that code can move forward.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 02/02/2009
Iterators are a crucial part of modern programming, not least because they provide the basis for collection traversal using For Each loops. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) adds to the importance of iterators, as iterators are the source of IEnumerable(Of T) that forms the backbone of LINQ. Learn how to take advantage of them in your code with several different techniques for creating your own iterators in VB.
- By Bill McCarthy
- 02/01/2009
If programmers are leaving VB and aren't going to C#, where are they going?
- By Daniel Appleman
- 02/01/2009
In these days of increasingly common least-privileged users, where should you store your application data?
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 01/19/2009
Learn how Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) 4.0 changes everything you thought you knew about workflow. Also, learn why using string primary keys is a bad idea; find out where to get a data grid for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); overcome the annoying issue of files not loading at runtime; and copy files into the executable directory.
- By Kathleen Dollard
- 01/01/2009
Can you name one thing Microsoft designed right the first time?
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 12/08/2008