DevCity.NET - Articles

Creating a ComboBox with Individual ToolTips for each Item

Ged Mead — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In this article, Ged Mead demonstrates an easy way to use WPF and Windows Forms Interop to create and use a ComboBox that displays ToolTips for individual ComboBox items.

How to Ask the User for Input

Larry Blake — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Visual Basic provides three easy ways to ask for input: MessageBox, InputBox and custom forms. I'll talk a little about all three.

OOP Basics - Property Validation and Exceptions

Ged Mead — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In this article, Ged Mead explains how to include validation in properties of a Class, how to throw and exception and how to use a Try-Catch block to handle the exception.

ADO.NET 3.5, LINQ, and the Entity Framework

Larry Blake — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Murach's ADO.NET 3.5, LINQ, and the Entity Framework by Anne Boehm, comes in both Visual Basic and C# 2008 versions. Larry Blake reviews it.

Object Oriented Programming Basics - Methods

Ged Mead — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the previous articles in this series, we covered basic Constructors, Fields and Properties.

In this article, we will look at the ToString method, introduce the concept of Inheritance, use the Object Browser and learn about Overrides and Overridable.

OOP Basics - Constructors

Ged Mead — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the previous Part, I created four fields and four corresponding properties in the Person class.

In this Part we will look at Constructors.

Beginning ASP.Net 3.5 in [C# / VB] 2008

Larry Blake — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew MacDonald wrote Visual Basic and C# versions of this book, with the subtitle "From Novice to Professional".

Larry Blake reviews it.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) - The Basics

Ged Mead — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is the first article in a series that will cover the very basics of OOP. It is based on a course I used to run. When I first wrote this I wanted to create something that I would have found useful in my very early VB.NET days. A really from-the-bottom explanation that assumed I knew nothing about OOP which would walk me through the basics.

I hope I have managed to achieve this in this series.

Part 1 covers Properties and Fields

How To Use The Visual State Manager(VSM) In Silverlight 2

Ged Mead — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This article walks you through the steps involved in using The Visual State Manager in Silverlight 2.

Most articles seem to use the button as the demonstration element - probably because that makes things very easy. But as soon as you move away from the small core set of elements such as button that have States preset for you, you will find that you need a slightly different approach.

In this article, I will cover both situations.

Customizing VS2008 default project templates

Kevin Gallagher — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This tutorial will guide you through the basic steps needed to alter the VB.NET Windows forms application project template in VS2008. Once you feel comfortable with this simple modification you can do the same for other project templates.