Section: Blogs

IAutoComplete

Nov 19, 2003 1 min.

I was playing with the SHAutoComplete API call and the IAutoComplete (2) interface last night (adding auto-complete to an application of mine) and I found a neat article and related component on CodeProject… C# does Shell, Part 4 by Arik Poznanski This article is about the AutoComplete features provided by Windows and how to use them with C#. AutoComplete is the ability to expand strings entered into an edit box.

Desktop Backgrounds

Nov 19, 2003 1 min.

I’m always looking for nice desktop backgrounds that are tasteful enough to display at work and searching on google (on this particular topic) just doesn’t find that many high-quality sites, so I thought I’d post a few of my recent finds; http://bibliofile.mc.duke.edu/gww/Backgrounds/backgrounds.html http://www.archives.sa.gov.au/archives/wallpaper.htm http://www.dolomitesworld.com/val/fotos1.asp?ln=EN

Scott Mitchell’s Data Structure Article is finally up…

Nov 18, 2003 1 min.

Ages ago, Scott Mitchell wrote the 1st of 6 articles on Data Structures in C#… and now it is finally up (through no fault of Scott’s) Check it out here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/datastructures_guide.asp An Extensive Examination of Data Structures Part 1: An Introduction to Data Structures Scott Mitchell 4GuysFromRolla.com October 2003 Summary: This article kicks off a six-part series that focuses on important data structures and their use in application development. We’ll examine both built-in data structures present in the .

Visual Basic RSS Feed should be a bit busier…

Nov 18, 2003 1 min.

There was a little issue with our criteria for the VB feed, which has now been resolved… so you should notice that feed will have a fair bit more content going forward… all of it hopefully relevant to VB types (like me!)

Interop Article by Sam Gentile

Nov 18, 2003 1 min.

Sam “blogger guy” Gentile has a new article up on MSDN: Beyond (COM) Add Reference: Has Anyone Seen the Bridge? Summary Sam Gentile explains the need for bridges between COM Interop and the Microsoft .NET Framework, and how bridges are implemented in the .NET Framework. Interop is such a major part of .NET coding these days so this should be a useful article!

Burn CDs right from your .NET code…

Nov 18, 2003 1 min.

Anson Horton gave me this cool .NET component and source code last night so I’ve uploaded it to microsoft.com for your burning fun The XPBurnComponent allows your .NET applications to burn files to CDR/W discs on a Window XP® or Windows 2003 Server system. This component does not work for systems which have a different OS installed; though it will detect that case and give a reasonable error message. This component talks directly to the system’s IMAPI interfaces and doesn’t use the Windows XP CD burning wizard, so it’s possible to create your own snazzy UI for burning CDs.

Looking for some Hands On Labs?

Nov 18, 2003 1 min.

Labs, Labs, get your labs here… 64 Bit BizTalk Compact Framework Next Gen Security (HOL 502) Office (Visio) Servers/Misc (CMS, RTC, WMI, MOM) SQL Server/Yukon Terrarium Lab Tools and Languages (Whidbey, etc…) Windows Forms The Longhorn and Indigo labs were already up; Longhorn Indigo I’ll be putting up a web page listing all of the individual labs contained within each .msi, but for now… feel free to dig around!

Reading An Image from the web…

Nov 17, 2003 2 min.

Nothing amazingly difficult about this task, but it was an interesting GotDotNet question posted today so I thought I would answer it here; Glenn Holden asks how to turn this file based function into one for images stored at http addresses… Protected Shared Function GetImageFromFile(ByVal FileName As String) As Byte() <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">Dim myFile <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">As <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">String = FileName <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">Dim fs <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">As FileStream = <font color="Blue" family="Microsoft Sans Serif">New FileStream(myFile, FileMode.

Upcoming Chats

Nov 15, 2003 1 min.

I was just browsing the chats page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats (boy, if ever a page was in need of an RSS feed, this would be it) and I noticed some really cool upcoming chats; Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) on January 14, 2004 at 10am PST The Essentials for Programming in Visual Basic .NET on November 14, 2003 at 1pm PST, and Changes for Visual C# in Whidbey on November 20th at 2pm PST Although there is no feed, they do have convenient links to add these items to your Calendar tool (maybe just Outlook?