Community developer blogs

VB & .NET Blogs @ vbCity

Recent Posts

• How To Get the Icon from an Application

  Posted: 27 Nov 2008 at 18:00

  This question comes up every so often in the forums and it's one of those things that you'd think should be easy, but actually isn't. Well, it isn't until you know how - like most things in developer land. The question is usually something along the lines of "How can I grab the icon

• WPF Missing In Action - The Button PerformClick Method

  Posted: 15 Nov 2008 at 15:59

  PerformClick is one of the many casualties of a move from Windows Forms to WPF. Of course, it's probably not something you would need to use often, but just in case you do then there is a way. It's not a very intuitive way and - had it not been that I spotted the C# version of this trick in Ad

• Blog Moving to New vbCity Blog Site at http://cs.vbcity.com/blogs/mike-mcintyre/default.aspx

  Posted: 07 Nov 2008 at 14:02

  My .Net Journal blog posts will be made to the new vbCity blog site from now on. Here's the link to my new blog site: Mike McIntyre's .NET Journal

• WPF project for Background Colours

  Posted: 26 Oct 2008 at 05:49

  It is a little longer than I expected to get the the project that goes along with this post about background colours in WPF but as they say better late ....The project can be downloaded from here.

• The Ampersand and XAML

  Posted: 26 Oct 2008 at 05:11

  I got caught the other day with a "what the heck" moment.I was trying to display "Mr & Mrs" as an Item in a ComboBox but it just was not happening.I suppose that this would not have come to light if my computer was not slowing down when I opened the ItemCollection window in Visual Stud

• WPF MIA - Anchor, Alignments,Canvas and Margins

  Posted: 25 Oct 2008 at 13:07

  Continuing my look at features that seem to be Missing in Action (MIA) from Windows Forms, vbCity colleague Matt pointed out to me that the Anchor property seems to have disappeared. I'm really pleased that this came up, because it gives me an opportunity to highlight just some of the massive

• WPF MIA: BackColor, Background, Colors and Brushes

  Posted: 23 Oct 2008 at 19:56

  One of the things that first caught me out in WPF was the simple topic of colors. For example, let's say you want to reset the BackColor of a Form in Windows Forms. Easy enough. This will do the job:Code Copy Me.BackColor = Color.CadetBlue When it comes to WPF, you'll know that we are deal

• WPF: How To Hide the Minimize and Maximize Buttons

  Posted: 22 Oct 2008 at 08:17

  For some time now, I've been promising myself that one day I will create a list of what I like to think of as "WPF MIA" - those basic elements that I am totally familiar with in WindowsForms, but which somehow seem to have disappeared into thin air in WPF. In many cases of course the

• Use LINQ and Visual Basic 2008 to Get a List of Buttons from a Windows Forms Form

  Posted: 19 Oct 2008 at 20:50

  Example:' Create a LINQ query.Dim buttonQuery = From control InMe.Controls WhereTypeOf (control) Is Button' Create a list of object.Dim buttonList = buttonQuery.ToList' Iterate through the objects in buttonList.ForEach btn As Button In buttonList' Show each button's text property.MessageBox.Show(btn

• Rename Files with the Visual Basic My Namespace Computer Object

  Posted: 19 Oct 2008 at 20:38

  My makes it easy to use .Net. Here's an example that uses My to rename a file:Syntax:PublicSharedSub RenameFile ( _ file AsString, _ newName AsString _)file is the file path to the file to be renamed.newName is the new name (with file extentsion) to be given to the file.Example:My.Computer.Fil

• Printing a Windows Foundation Presentation FlowDocument

  Posted: 18 Oct 2008 at 08:05

  I have just discovered the most compelling reason to port over any projects I have to Windows Presentation Foundataion (WPF) as well as only starting new projects as a WPF project.The reason you ask? Well the answer is one word.PrintingBeing a File I/O guy, printing has almost always needed to be a

• Tables in a Windows Presentation Foundation FlowDocument

  Posted: 08 Oct 2008 at 08:24 by V. Neil Knobbe

  vbCity Leader (and Microsoft MVP) Ged Mead showed how to create a FlowDocument in his article published on devCity.com. I got the challenge recently to display a data inserted in a table in a flowdocument.  So I embarked on my quest. I knew that what I wanted could be done because some qui

• Windows Presentation Foundation ToolTip

  Posted: 08 Oct 2008 at 07:39 by V. Neil Knobbe

  Once again it seems that I had what I thought was a great idea only to find out that someone else had it before I did. I don’t even know how I got to thinking about ToolTips and how boring they look, but I did and that got me to wondering what could be accomplished with Windows Presentation Fo

• Silverlight Visual Basic How-Do-I Videos Available Now

  Posted: 05 Oct 2008 at 14:14 by Mike McIntyre [MVP Visual Basic]

  The Silverlight team has Visual Basic How-Do-I videos, and all the code downloads are now equally available in VB and C#.   Silverlight Visual Basic How-Do-I Videos 

• How do you BUILD?

  Posted: 04 Oct 2008 at 23:26 by Mike McIntyre [MVP Visual Basic]

  At aZ Software we are looking to give our build process a major shot in the arm.  Do you build enterprise applications – what do they use for build? For new implementations? For upgrades? Do you use MS Build, NAnts? NAnts with Vincent-Vega? CruizeControl? TeamCity? Others?

• Object Initializers - A New Perspective

  Posted: 28 Aug 2008 at 07:09 by Ged Mead

    There's something that's always bothered me a little bit about creating classes. We go to the trouble of creating backing Private fields and Public properties in order to implement data hiding - right?   And when we want to include data validation, we usually use properties fo

• Automatically resize a Windows Presentation Foundation Form.

  Posted: 17 Aug 2008 at 09:17 by V. Neil Knobbe

  Once again it seems that a post from vbCity is to be fodder for a post here. Although not part of the original query by vbcity member quicksun, the question of getting a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Form to be resized as the expander control was either expanded or collapsed came up. I went

• Google-beater? Don’t make me laugh!

  Posted: 28 Jul 2008 at 22:07 by Stuart Parr

  A handful of ex-Googlies have set up a new search engine which they reckon is going to beat Google. Hmmm. Well, I saw this mentioned on BBC News earlier today but didn't bother checking it out. Then I saw a thread about it on Telford Live so I thought I'd best give it a whirl seeing as how people ar

• Another day, another prediction

  Posted: 17 Jul 2008 at 14:48 by Stuart Parr

  Sometimes it seems like everyone in the IT world thinks they're a psychic - every other day there's some headline declaring the imminent death or arrival of something computer related. This time it's the turn of the humble mouse.  Not the little rodent that goes squeak squeak, can't stand chees

• Reaching the code behind with Windows Presentation Foundation

  Posted: 16 Jul 2008 at 22:58 by V. Neil Knobbe

  I mentioned in an earlier post that for a control in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that you had to give each control that you wanted to write code behind for a name in the XAML of the form. Strictly this is not true.  If you want don’t want to use the built in featur