Visual Basic Encounter |
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by Fred Thorlin |
Visual Basic Version 5.0, VB5, has more goodies on the CD than you can shake a stick at, or find. When you bring it up the number of parts making up the system will befuddle you. Microsoft seems to acknowledge this by offering the MDI interface as the in stallation default. The first time you discover your program running under the MDI frame you will turn off that option. You are then left with toolbars, windows and views aplenty. A development environment add-in is the last thing you need.
Wrong! After enjoying the acreage revealed by the Windows 95 Taskbar Autohide option, you know you need this technique applied elsewhere. The good news is that Sheridan's VBAssist5 lets you hide up to four of your favorite windows in the corners of the s creen with the Workspace Assistant. The really good news is that VBAssist5 is available with this and several more goodies in a package that hustles! Let's face it, VBAssist4 was slug-slow, even when you didn't use it. VBAssist5 is transparent when not b eing used. I couldn't get it to break stride when using its tools on forms with less than 200 controls. In reality, this isn't version 5 of anything, it is a brand new look at a design time environment based on the years of experience Sheridan gained fro m the initial implementation of VBAssist.
You will probably want to reserve one of your corners for the Project Control View. This is another new feature of VBAssist5. It presents all of the elements of your program in your choice of two tree-structured views they call the Project View and the C ontrol View. Collapsing and expanding branches hides and reveals controls, constants and procedures. In a right hand frame properties or code is displayed as appropriate. Controls in a container are identified but, surprisingly, this information is not d isplayed in the tree structure. I wish I could edit code in this view. Double click on a procedure and it takes you to the beginning of the code module in the VB5 editor. Double click on a control and its form is displayed with that control selected. I w ish the second window were below, in stead of beside, the tree. What is there now is good. It is on the road to being great.
I have always felt frustrated by not having a zoom so I could more easily and accurately position the controls on my forms. The extant alignment tools are good but I want page layout tools. VBAssist5 has the zoom. You drag the zoom window onto the part o f the screen you want to examine. You don't get to work in the zoomed view, but you can easily count pixels and see the effect, in detail, of your editing steps. Don't save it in one of the Workspace Assistant's corners, though; remember this is version 1.0. These corner windows slide on and off screen. An option is needed to turn this off. The sliding becomes spastic on notebook computers.
The Accelerator Assistant is new and will be appreciated by anyone who has wrestled with accelerator key assignments. Activate it. Pick a control from the list. Only characters available for assignment and contained in the control's label appear at the t op of the control in black. Letters already assigned appear in gray. Click the character of your choice and you are done. Attempt to reassign a letter and it is unassigned. Two other tabs identify controls without accelerator keys and conflicting key ass ignments. They must have been created when this tool wasn't around.
Another new feature I am finding very useful is Property Tips. I have an application in development that uses sparse control arrays linked through ToolTips and computed indices. It works great as long as you don't put the wrong ToolTip in the right panel . Tracking down such mistakes without this feature is a real pain in the wrist. With Property Tips I can get the Index, Caption and ToolTip conveniently and completely displayed. To do this all you do is enable Property Tips and identify which properties you want displayed. Let your mouse hover over a control and a moment later the selected properties are displayed. If you pick a control that doesn't have some of the properties you select, you get a shorter list.
VBAssist5 has all of the capabilities of its earlier incarnations. Most of these have been redesigned and improved. This isn't just a rework of an earlier product for VB5. This is a complete redevelopment based on a lot of experience. It is a version 1.0 , but it is the way I want to go. Hop on board!
Fred Thorlin, a HAL-PC member, is president of Personal Instruments, Inc. The Houston, Texas based company does Visual Basic development, consulting and training. ©1996 Personal Instruments, Inc. All rights reserved.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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