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The prize for this month's competition comes from Olvio IT and brings you a chance to win one of three valuable prizes.

PlusDock is a great tool for developers, offering an easy to use advanced windows docking system. Its range of features includes custom docking panels, floating forms, autohide panels and redockable windows. It also boasts Office2003 theme support and integrated WYSIWYG designer support.

Three full developer licences are on offer for three lucky winners.
And it is easy to enter and win. Simply download the free evaluation version of PlusDock from Olvio.

Once you have the trial version installed, you will see that several useful samples are included. Take a look at the one named "VisualStudioClone".
One of the options in the menu is "Save/Restore layout". Once you have checked out this sample, identify the answer to the following question and send it to answers@devcity.net

Which member of the RestoreLayoutStepEventArgs is used in the handler for the RestoreLayoutStep Event to determine which type of item is currently being restored?
Is it:

1. Items
2. ItemType
3. Typeof.Item
4. TypedItem

Hint: The event handler is called "dockModel1_RestoreLayoutStep".

That's all there is to it! Simply send your answer - a, b, c or d - to the email address given above.

Because we're a little late with our second March newsletter, we've extended the final deadline to 10th April 2005, when the names of three contestants who have sent in correct answers will be drawn. Each of the winners will receive a full developers license for PlusDock 1.0.

Do it now, before you forget :-) Check out the Olvio Website and the Competition Info now!

http://www.olvio.com/devcitycompetition.aspx

by Ged Mead

A parcel came through my letter box this morning. Not a momentous event, you may think; people get parcels all the time. Even me. But this parcel was different, because it represented something very special.

In fact, this parcel happened to contain a network hub which will be very handy to help me to complete a home network I'm currently fixing up. But that's not what the big deal is about it.

You see, the parcel came from a friend. The friend offered to send me the hub - for free - because I'd been telling him the sorry tale of my struggles to get a network up and running.

Now, like most of us, there are lots of people that I am proud to call friends. I know a lot of things about the way they work, what they think and where they live. Strangely, I have met almost none of them. I've never met the friend who sent me the network hub, for instance, although I like to think I know him well.

The parcel sender is one of the many friends I've made on line over the past few years through VBCity. I wasn't involved in VBCity in its first couple of years but it's obvious that when Serge Baranovsky first set it up he hoped it would be much more than just a VB developers code swap shop. His vision of a community where international friendships blossom and grow has surely become a reality.

Just within my own circle of personal VBCity friends, I could cite lots of examples where the friendship has resulted in practical help that would otherwise not have happened.

• I have a slow dial-up connection, so downloading large Service Packs and SDKs is a real problem for me; a VBCity friend always offers to download, burn to CD and post them to me.
• Another friend lives in a country where it is difficult to get a credit card and so he can't buy books online ; I don't have that problem, so am happy to help by ordering using my credit card and having the books sent direct to him.
• Another had fallen on hard times; unbeknown to him, several friends clubbed together to help out financially and get him back on his feet again.

I've just picked three random examples across the world from very many more that I could mention. But again it's not the detail of the examples that's the point. What is the point is the amazing fact that these otherwise total strangers have been brought together, willingly help each other out and cement friendships that go so much deeper than the basic "can you help me with this code?" help that probably brought us all here in the first place.

In the wider picture, there are lots of other things I love about VBCity. As a typical Brit who can barely stumble through schoolboy French and half-learnt German, I am in awe of the way so many members for whom English is not their first language can so eloquently express views, concepts and provide detailed accurate answers.

I'm often moved by some of the tales of success, failure, happiness and despair that members post in the chat forums. It is reassuring to see that every tale of woe always brings posts of support, advice and encouragement from other members.

And isn't it wonderful to see how people have the patience to draw out the details of a poorly expressed question (often not the fault of the person asking)? Language and translation difficulties play a part sometimes, but simply understanding enough about the problem to be able to express it clearly can also be the biggest obstacle. Sometimes it takes several pages of probing and answering before a problem finally gets clarified and - usually - resolved.

And I love to see those posts in a thread where a totally baffled member has finally had a Eureka moment, thanks to the help of others. We've all been there, done that, got the T-shirt!

Many times over the years I've seen new members ask questions and finish off with a comment like "Sorry for the dumb noob questions. I hope I'll be able to help out at some stage". The great thing is that so often that's exactly what does happen. The "Helpees" very quickly become the Helpers themselves. This year's Newbies will be the next generation of Gurus not too far down the line.

Serge should be very proud of what he has created. I know it has taken an awful lot of his time, effort, dedication and investment.

And I also know for a fact that very many of us really do appreciate everything that he has poured into the site to make it the great worldwide community that it has now become.

VBCity.

It's what life's all about .... or should be.

- Junior (Ged Mead aka XTab, xtab@vbcity.com)

by Mike McIntyre

This is the first in a series of articles which will discuss evolving to VB.NET from a previous version of Visual Basic.

Revolutionary Change

Visual Basic 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 added new features but kept the same underlying architecture.

Visual Basic 7.x, commonly known as VB.NET, is built on a new architecture - the .NET Platform - which brings revolutionary change to Visual Basic and the environment in which it is compiled and executed.

The language has been optimized for object-oriented programming (OOP). New keywords and syntax have been added. Some old keywords and syntax have been removed.

VB.NET code is compiled into intermediate language (IL) that is loaded, compiled, executed, and managed by the .NET Framework's Common Runtime Engine (CLR).

VB.NET programmers can use the thousands of pre-defined classes in the .NET Framework's Class Library (FCL).

VB.NET applications are developed using Visual Studio.NET, a new integrated development environment (IDE) shared by all languages built on the .NET Framework.

Good News and Not-So-Good News

The good news is that the unprecedented changes have added more features to Visual Basic.NET than were added to Visual Basic 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 combined.

The not-so-good news is that with so many changes a VB.NET upgrade is more complex and time consuming than previous Visual Basic upgrades.

Evolving to VB.NET

An evolutionary process is a process in which something passes by degrees to a more advanced stage.

Evolving to VB.NET is a process in which developers and systems are moved by degrees from a previous version of Visual Basic to VB.NET.

Developers and system architects begin to evolve to VB.NET by learning the fundamentals of the .NET Framework and the changes that have been made to the Visual Basic language. It is impossible to make good decisions about evolving systems to VB.NET from previous versions of Visual Basic without first going through this learning curve. Knowledge about previous versions of Visual Basic is not enough.

Armed with the fundamentals, developers and architects analyze existing systems to determine if, when, and how they should be upgraded to VB.NET. Not all systems can or should be upgraded. Some should be upgraded now, some later.

Let's Get Started

Are you ready to evolve? Stay tuned.

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Three new articles have been published on the DevCity site since the last newsletter.

VBCity Leader Chris Manning (a.k.a. betrl8thanever) shows you how to add those very useful shortcut keys to your custom controls. Using a custom button control as an example, he takes you through all the steps needed to add this functionality. Check out the details in his Adding Mnemonics (Short Cut Keys) to Your Controls article.

Veteran VBCity author Ged Mead has launched into a series of articles introducing some basic graphics skills using GDI+. Many of the techniques available can be something of a mystery to the newcomer and these articles are designed to help beginners master the core methods of the Graphics Class.
In Chart Success Part 2 he demonstrates how to use Graphics Class methods to create a simple Bar Chart.

The next instalment, Part 3, Second Helpings of Pie improves on the user interface which was the subject of the first article - creating a Pie Chart.

http://www.devcity.net/

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