Status Report – May 23, 2002


Howdy everyone, I’m pretty exhausted – looking forward to the long weekend here in the States… <g>

I just wanted to thank those of you who responded to my query last week about difficult scenarios with Winform apps. For this week, why don’t we look at data access? Let me know what you think! To keep it interesting and allow for feedback, please post your messages here online so others can see them.


The highlights for the week:

1. Coding continues on the new VB community website on GotDotNet. Current target is still mid-June. I really hope that it becomes a place where people can get information about all the great things going on around VB .NET. The basic idea is to have a great place to announce what’s available on all sites – not just on GotDotNet.

2. Lots of work on getting people online and more user group support. Had a few nice messages come in this week thanking a few of the QA people who’ve been getting online…

3. Work on the next version of VB .NET

4. Continuing planning for the next set of chats (starting on July now) – if you have any topics you’d like covered, let me know! This week’s chat went really well, and included a ton of questions and answers on working with data. The transcript should be online in the next week or so.

-yag


Upcoming chats (http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats):

Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, May 28, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Join us for a chat covering the things to keep in mind and best practices of
exception handling in Visual Basic .NET applications.

Whitepaper: Introduction to Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchexceptionserrorsinvisualbasicnet.asp



Windows Forms Controls
Tuesday, June 4, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

The Visual Studio .NET ToolBox comes with a great deal of Windows Forms controls that enable your applications to accomplish all manner of tasks. Bring your questions about the Windows Forms controls, and we'll see what we can do about getting you some answers.



Working with Windows Forms DataGrid Controls
Tuesday, June 11, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Learn how to get the most out of the DataGrid! Join us for an open discussion of programming with the Windows Forms DataGrid control.


White Papers
Writing Error Messages for Security Features
Good error messages give a notification that a problem occurred, an explanation of why the problem occurred, and a solution so that the user can fix the problem. Good error message text is specific, user-centered, clear, consistent, and courteous. Writing good error messages is hard work, but it is something that must be done right. This document offers essential information for writing, presenting, and testing security-related messages.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsecure/html/securityerrormessages.asp

Developing Custom Windows Controls Using Visual Basic .NET
One of the biggest selling points of Microsoft® Visual Basic® has always been its support for components, allowing third parties to develop visual controls (and eventually, non-visual components) that provided new functionality to the Visual Basic developer. This article provides an overview of associated sample articles illustrating the basic concepts of Microsoft Windows control development through both discussion and code snippets.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/custcntrlsampover.asp?frame=true

Wonders of Windows Forms: State Sanity Using Smart Clients
Chris Sells kicks off his new Voices column on Windows Forms. In this column, he discusses state management in Windows Forms clients.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnforms/html/winforms05202002.asp