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The Latest

Display Tooltips

You can easily duplicate the tooltips that appear when you float the mouse over a button in Microsoft’s products. This code displays the tooltip in the lower right-hand corner of

Random Values Without Duplicates

This code produces a “random” sequence of integers between specified Lower and Upper values without duplication. On the first call to the Shuffle routine with new values for Upper and

Change Display Settings on the Fly

When writing a game for Windows 95, set the display resolution to 640-by-480, set the color palette to True Color when it runs, and restore it to its initial mode

Comment Multiple Lines

VB provides only single-line comment functions: “REM” and “‘”. If you’re looking for another way to comment out a block of code, use conditional compilation in VB4 instead. Define “COMMENT

Write Less CPU-Bound Animations

When doing animation, such as scrolling a label or using picture boxes, I first used the method described by Eric Bernatchez (“Smoother Control Animation,” “101 Tech Tips for VB Developers,”

Use Subscripts and Superscripts

You can use subscripts and superscripts in a RichTextBox control. To prevent the control from truncating text that is raised or lowered too far, reduce the characters’ size accordingly: Private

Export Data to ISAM Databases

Use this code to get data out to different formats without requiring a complete copy of the DBMS on the user machine. Create a new project with a command button,

Highlight Text Automatically

When the focus of a graphical user interface shifts to an empty TextField, you type the desired input and step to the next one. But if the TextField is not

Stabilized Scrollbars

Numerous awt Components provide their own Scrollbars when needed. However, when you first employ one explicitly, perhaps for adjusting colors, you may encounter a frustrating problem. On some platforms the

Enable Pasting to Spreadsheets

A TextArea is ideal for presenting tabular results from an applet or application. It provides Scrollbars automatically when the text exceeds the available screen space. But despite careful use of

Avoid Premature Dialog Closure

On some platforms, hitting the “Enter” key to terminate input to a TextField will cause the whole dialog box to disappear, as if you had clicked an “OK” button. If

Displaying Help from an Application

It’s tempting to use an HTML file to provide help for a Java application, but how do you know which browser is installed on the run time platform and where

Forward Declarations

There are circumstances in which classes refer to one another: //file: bank.hclass Report{public:void Output(const Account& account); // compile time error; class Account is not declared yet};class Account {public:void Show() {Report::Output(*this);}};

Unnamed Function Arguments

When an argument of a function is not used anymore in the function body (in an upgrade, for example), it needn’t be removed from the function’s argument list. It can

Beware of Aliasing

Whenever your class contains pointers, references, or handles, you need to define a copy constructor and assignment operator. Otherwise, the compiler-generated copy constructor and assignment operator will result in aliasing,

Internationalized Strings

If you’ve been using the standard string class and you have to internationalize your software, you don’t have to give up the significant advantages class string offers: you can simply

Static Variables

Static variables (not to be confused with static class members) have the qualities of both global and local variables: they are initialized by default to binary zeroes (unless explicitly initialized

Data Sources

Question: Do I have to duplicate DSNs on the development PC and the Web server for Visual InterDev to work, or can I use the Data Source on the Web

ASP error ‘0115’

Question: I have MDAC 1.5 on my Windows 95 box running PWS 4.0. I get ASP ‘0115’ when trying to run any of the ASP scripts, even the samples downloaded

How to invoke Word from ASP

Question: I have a successful ASP application that returns data to an IE4 browser and requests that the browser display the data as an Excel spreadsheet. When I save the

wince_palmpc

Question: Microsoft currently has a VB5 extension to allow programming of the WinCE handheld PCs, but not for the Palm PCs. Is Microsoft planning a version of WinCE VB for

WinCE / SystemTray

Question: My question involves SystemTray controls for WinCE 2.0. I am familiar with the ActiveX controls that can use the SystemTray in Win95. However, I am not sure how to

Menus & Toolbars for Frame and Sheets

Question: I would like to build two toolbars on the screen. The first is one that goes along the top of the screen that is associated with the menu in

Formatting output

Question: I’m trying to format the output of the select query that I have done. The fields in the database are too large to parse easily, so they need to

Royalty fee

Question: I’d like to know if there’s any royaltyto be paid when I distribute the applications I did in PowerBuilder. Answer: No, you can distribute PB client applications royalty-free. You

Color Dialog (Common Dialog)

Question: How can I use the CHOOSECOLOR WIN32 API with Powerbuilder? Answer: Create a custom user object and declare the following local structure:long lstructsizeulong hwndownerulong hinstancelong rgbresultblob lpcustcolorslong flagslong lcustdatalong

Identity Primary Key column

Question: I have a recurring problem inserting rows into tables that have a column that is “int IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY.” At some point in the life of the table, I

Backup

Question: I am trying to back up a database to a disk backup device over a network. When I attempt my backup, I encounter an error 5 ? Access denied.