Net-related technology is already moving at a frightening pace, but vendors are actively making things more confusing by continuously coming up with new names for slight variations on existing technology.

If you’re building applets using Microsoft’s Visual J++, you might encounter problems the first time you try to run your applet outside of the development environment. Typical examples of this

Regardless of the Java VM you’re using, from time to time you’ll encounter a client that is unable to run your applet because of an “undefined package” error, even though

Question: Hi, Ohh great and powerful one(just kidding). hhhhmmmm, yeah, i am calling ascript form my Form that spawns a process and does not have to return any HTML; what

The last thing you should do before creating your final EXE is clean your code. This tip explains how to clean the garbage from your project that is sometimes left

It’s easy to make a scrollable viewport for a picture in both VB3 VB4. In addition to a picture, you can also use other objects that grow. First, create a

The ability to write add-ins under VB 4.0 is a significant addition to the developer’s toolbox. However, writing and distributing add-ins can be fraught with many a mind-boggling experience. One

The Code Profiler does not properly handle relative directory references in the VBP file. If the file looks like this, Code Profiler aborts trying to process the CRW45 file: Module=PASSMAN1;

There you are, creating an OLE server in Visual Basic. You go to Options in the Tools menu, select the Project tab, choose “OLE Server,” and click on OK. After

My first encounter with Visual Basic (VB1) was a letdown because I had become accustomed to using the original Basic “DATA” statement for loading numeric values. The statement was also

When you create a screen saver in Visual Basic, you may sometimes utilize the command-line options such as “/s” to start a screen saver directly or “/c” to run the

With applications increasingly using modems, it is quite possible that users will start your application, forgetting that another application is already using the modem-like a fax machine, for example.The MS

This routine allows a hidden table to be appended to the Tables collection in an MDB file. I use the table name as a brand or stamp. During development, I

While working with classes in VB 4.0, we found that the errors raised from our classes were not being trapped at the form level. We used “On Error Resume Next,”

To maintain sanity, I use long descriptive names for tables and queries in Jet MDB files. This leads to errors when I type these names into VB code. To overcome

Occasionally, you may want to use on your form a beveled panel that allows you to designate a background bitmap. Rather than use a third-party control, you can use the

To prevent users from typing spaces in a text box, include this code in the KeyPress event of the text box: Private Sub Text1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer) If KeyAscii = 32

In general, stored Access queries are faster than embedded SQL in your VB application. It can be a great benefit to be able to send parameters to the query directly

You can quickly find the name of the Windows or the Windows System directory. Just pass “WindowsDirectory” or “WindowsSystemDirectory” into this function: Declare Function wu_GetWindows_ Directory Lib “Kernel” Alias _

Use this code to quickly determine whether Microsoft Mail is currently running: Declare Function GetModuleHandle Lib _ “Kernel” (ByVal lpModuleName As String) As IntegerFunction IsMicrosoftMailRunning ()On Error GoTo IsMicrosoftMailRunning_ErrIsMicrosoftMailRunning =

If you get the error “User-defined type not defined” on a line where you are declaring a database, go to Tools, then go to References, and select the appropriate DAO

Sometimes you need to change the size of controls by changing the size of a container. For example, try this: Private Sub Form_Resize() Picture1.Align = vbAlignLeft Picture1.Align = vbAlignTopEnd Sub

While working on VB projects with associated Jet databases, I found that I was creating a lot of individual handling functions for reading, writing, and validating data. It was hard

When a user presses the Cancel button, the control that previously had focus triggers its LostFocus event, which is where many programs do their validity checking. If the input wasn’t

Rather than using Visual Basic’s line and shape objects when drawing complex graphic backgrounds on forms, use the MS Draw applet included with most Microsoft products to draw a Windows

One problem that occurs frequently is taking the menu structure from one form and placing it in another. Although my method of dealing with this dilemma requires a little effort,

Suppose you have two list boxes side by side-one to display the name of a person, the other to display his or her e-mail address. If the boxes contain several

I have seen many posters in the VB newsgroups that say they have received an ODBC error message such as 3146, but can’t figure out why they got the message.

Sometimes it is useful to set a cursor to determine control when a form is loading-after the form is done loading, the cursor stays on the control you have ordered:

To synchronously shell an application from a 16-bit VB application, some people write code like this: Const HINSTANCE_ERROR% = 32Dim hInstChild As Integer’Shell program, if Shell worked, enter loophInstChild =