One of the first projects that someone new to programming often wants to do is a game. Often times they want to do something they have seen on their consoles or mega computer games without realizing how much work actually goes into designing and implementing a game of that scope. After reading a book about programming they realize how tough those games are and that games of that scope usually ...
A number of years ago I showed an example of creating a typical digital clock using picture numbers and a little bit of VB.NET code. Fast forward to today and I have decided to show you an example of creating an analog style clock in VB.NET 2012. These types of clocks you may know very well. They are the ones with the hands and the ones your watch is probably ...
One of the most underutilized properties of any control is a property called "tag". What does it do? Does it cure world hunger? Does it save the planet from annihilation? I would probably say no on both counts, but it does have a bit of a mystique that beginners may not be fully aware of. In design mode of Visual Studio if you select a control, a button or text ...
Once in awhile you may want to check if a file has changed its contents in some way. Perhaps you are monitoring a log file or checking to see if an exe has had a virus mess with it. One way you could do this is by hooking up a FileSystemWatcher object and monitor the file. This might be a good approach for more elaborate programs where you also want ...
So recently someone asked about listing files from several directories but only to a given depth. They were using a DirectoryInfo object, as they probably should, to get a list of files. There was a problem with this however since the constructor of this object only offers a version where you specify no recursion on the sub directories or full recursion and get all the sub directories. This is an ...
So I was tinkering around with some code and thought "Hey, wouldn't it be great to create a class that could be used to tie into bit.ly's API for shortening URLs?" After having this thought I also thought "I am hungry" so went to get some lunch. Then when I came back, I got to work putting together a quick class that a programmer could use in their projects for ...
