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August 7, 1997

Design Your Colors So User Can Change Them

Pay close attention to the color selections you make in your forms.Windows 95 gives the user more control over colors than previous versionsof Windows allowed. problems arise if the user

Create Temporary Files

I’m developing a database program that deals with many auxiliary files at same time. Everyone codingdatabase programs must create some temporary files to produce an output from SQL or a

Opening Password-Protected Databases

Use the connect parameter of the OpenDatabase method to open adatabase that is password-protected in VB4-32. For example, thiscode opens the Secure database with a password of “dirt”: Dim wrk

DoEvents() And Preempitive Multitasking

Windows 95 is a preemptive multitasking system. As a result of this,no single application monopolizes the entire CPU at any given time. Manyof the DoEvents() calls previously used in Windows

Accurate Time Delay

This routine allows you to put a fairly accurate time delay, veryuseful for I/O routines and nice, graphic-delayed drawing routinesin your code: Sub Delay (milliseconds As Integer)’ This Routine uses

Emulating Overstrike Mode in Text Boxes

Windows text boxes always work in insert mode and don’t provide anoverstrike mode. However, overstrike mode can easily be emulated as shownhere: Sub Text1_KeyPress (KeyAscii As Integer) If KeyAscii >=

Speedy List Boxes

One way to speed list-box loading is to eliminate the constant redrawingrequired while loading. You can do this by calling the LockWindowUpdateAPI. LockWindowUpdate accepts an HWND as a parameter to

Understanding Unicode

VB4 introduces the use of double-byte characters. Most of this is transparentto the programmer and requires no special consideration. When calling APIfunctions or reading/writing to a file VB will handle