More Microsoft “How Do I” Video Updates and Service Pack 1 for 2008
By admin | August 29, 2008
(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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Just wanted to mention that Microsoft officially launched the RTM version Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 a couple weeks ago. It includes many fixes and some other features and improvements. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) performance has been greatly increased as well. Click Here to check out the Service Pack for VB 2008.
Also Microsoft has been adding new How Do I videos for Visual Basic 2008 the past couple of months it appears. Its definitely worth checking out. It looks like Microsoft added many newer videos working with Excel and Microsoft Office and services. Linq and data-based programming looks to be updated as well. Remember that MSDN has many 2005 based videos as well. Anyways, Click Here if you want to check out the full list of MSDN’s “How Do I” video series. Have Fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.NET 05/08 Only), - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | No Comments »
Textbox Manipulation in VB and .NET - Using API
By admin | July 21, 2008
(5 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5) Loading ...
This is a basic article on how to do various textbox manipulating that isn't exposed in your normal VB or VB.NET textbox like Page Left or Scroll to the Edge (That I am aware of anyways).
Note: These codes are basically taken from a example I made at my vbcodesource.com site for VB.NET that shows how to do lots and lots of various textbox based manipulating. Just go to http://www.vbcodesource.com/ under the Visual Basic.NET - Examples page.
So in Part #1 of this article I will present some codes that will accomplish what is outlined below to a textbox control...
Page Left
Page Right
Line Left
Line Right
Left Edge
Right Edge
_________________________________
To accomplish these features I will use the tried and true Windows API. Specifically the SendMessage Function is used. Below is the declaration for VB Classic and VB.NET
Visual Basic 6.0
'Used to Send Messages to the control.
Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32.dll" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal winHandle As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
Visual Basic.NET 2002/2003/2005/2008
'
Used to Send Messages to the control.
Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32.dll" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal winHandle As Int32, ByVal wMsg As Int32, ByVal wParam As Int32, ByVal lParam As Int32) As Int32
_________________________________
Now for some Constants...
Private Const WM_HSCROLL = &H114
Private Const WM_VSCROLL = &H115
Private Const SB_LINERIGHT = 1
Private Const SB_LINELEFT = 0
Private Const SB_PAGERIGHT = 3
Private Const SB_PAGELEFT = 2
Private Const SB_RIGHT = 7
Private Const SB_LEFT = 6
_________________________________
Now all thats really needed is the textbox you want to send messages to and calling the sendmessage api with the right combination of contants to perform the intended function.
_________________________________
NOTE: If your using VB 5.0 or VB 6.0 then change some small things below...
Change - txtControl.Handle.ToInt32 to txtControl.hWnd
Change - Unless your getting the SendMessage functions return value then remove the parentheses which are the ( and ) characters.
Thats basically the only changes that are needed.
_________________________________
Page Left / Page Right
'
'Move the position pageleft.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_PAGELEFT, 0)
'
'Move the position pageright.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_PAGERIGHT, 0)
Line Left / Line Right
'
'Move the position left.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_LINELEFT, 0)
'
'Move the position right.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_LINERIGHT, 0)
Left Edge / Right Edge
'
'Move the position to the left edge.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_LEFT, 0)
'
'Move the position to the right edge.
SendMessage(txtControl.Handle.ToInt32, WM_HSCROLL, SB_RIGHT, 0)
_________________________________
Thats basically all for Part #1. These 6 features do not have native VB or VB.NET codes and therefore the API's are used. As you can see though its pretty simple to add..
Part #2 will go over: Page Up/Page Down, Line Up/Line Down, and Top Edge/Bottom Edge.
Till then, Have fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.5.0/6.0), - (.NET 05/08 Only), - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | No Comments »
Sharpening Your Axis with Visual Basic 9 - Code Magazine Article
By admin | July 13, 2008
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This is a four (4x) page article on using Linq with XML. The article breaks it down fairly well and shows how to do some pretty cool things using these features. The first page goes over XML Literals and using them with Embedded Expressions. Page two is basically using the XML Axis properties and creating XML Intellisense. Page three goes somewhat deep on using XML Relational Data using LINQ features. The final page goes over more Advance Namespace Scenerioes and provides some Tips and Tricks you can use as well. Anyways, below is a brief overview from the author.
Author Info...
Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008 has a new set of language features that allows developers to work with XML in a much more productive way using a new API called LINQ to XML. LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to write queries for things like objects, databases, and XML in a standard way. Visual Basic provides deep support for LINQ to XML through what’s called XML literals and XML axis properties. These features allow you to use a familiar, convenient syntax for working with XML in your Visual Basic code. LINQ to XML is a new, in-memory XML programming API specifically designed to leverage the LINQ framework. Even though you can call the LINQ APIs directly, only Visual Basic allows you to declare XML literals and directly access XML axis properties. This article will help you master these new features for working with XML in Visual Basic.
If your interested in checking out the article then simple hit this link to view it. Have Fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | No Comments »
How-to Playback Movies/Videos in VB and Visual Basic .NET
By admin | July 6, 2008
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...As you will see, playback of movies and/or videos of various formats is fairly easy to do. As you may have already guessed this article will be using the Windows MCI Command interface for the playback which is supported on all of the modern Windows OS including Windows XP and Windows Vista. Specifically the MCISendString function api will be used in this tutorial.
MCI should by default already support the older common formats like avi, mpg, mpeg, wmv ect... based videos. But you can actually program the device to playback nearly all formats that are used. All you usually need to do is install the Codec/Driver for that format.
Example: If you wanted to playback an Apple Quicktime .Mov file then simply install the codec for that format. Or if you want to play MPEG 4 DivX based videos then just install the DivX codec. After that just program the device like you normally would.
This article only shows the basic playback for movies/videos and not a bunch of different features like getting the duration/length, position and status of the video. You should check out my MCI MultiMedia Tutorial at this link to learn how to program the device for adding your own custom features. The codes in the article are basically similar with All versions of Visual Basic. Mainly just change the variable types for the codes. The codes below are based around .NET but for them to work for VB 5.0 and 6.0 you just need to change, for example, Int32 or Integer types to "Long" types.
___________________________________________
'
'The Main API call that will be used for the playback. Simply change the "Integer" to "Long" if your using Classic VB like VB 6.0.
Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, ByVal uReturnLength As Integer, ByVal hwndCallback As Integer) As Integer
'
'Will hold the path to the movie file.
Dim filename As String
'
'Holds the return value of mciSendstring. Not used for anything in this article though.
Dim retVal As Integer
____________________________________________
Now that the API and variables are setup its about that time to program the device.
Note: Be Sure to specify the file's path in the filename variable for the video you want to play!
____________________________________________
Important Info: There are basically Two(2) ways you can setup your movie or video. You can display the movie in its Own window which will popup a window separate from your application or you can specify the control/window where you want it to be displayed. For instance you can have the video play on your Form or on your Picturebox control.
You first need to open and setup a new device to playback your video. I normally use the MPEGVideo device since it will basically work with most all of the movie formats. The MPEGVideo device is usually DirectShow. If you want MCI to determine which device to use just take out the: "type mpegvideo" codes. The first code will setup the device to play in its Own window and the second will play the video on a control.
If you've seen my other MCI articles you will notice you should remember the need to add "Quotes" around the filename and path, or at least supply the Shortpathname for the files path.
'
'The path to the movie or video to play.
filename = "c:\movies\MyMovie.wmv"
'Now add the quotes around the path.
filename = Chr(34) & filename & Chr(34)
'
'Specify the mpegvideo driver to play the movies which should play most movie formats without any problems. This code will have the video open in its Own window and the alias name will be "movie".
retVal = mciSendString("open " & filename & " type mpegvideo alias movie", 0, 0, 0)
'
'This code will open a new mpegvideo device and play the movie in the "movieWindow" control which is nothing more than a GroupBox/Frame control I used in a example app. Basically any control with a handle can be used. For VB 5/6 you might need to specify the controls .hWnd property instead of the Handle.ToInt32 property that .NET uses.
retVal = mciSendString("open " & filename & " type mpegvideo alias movie parent " & movieWindow.Handle.ToInt32 & " style child", 0, 0, 0)
This code below is used if you want to open a new video file using the same "movie" alias that has already been opened. Use this code, right before you open the new device with the 'open filename' code above, which will close the previous device and alias. This should also be called when your application is closing so all of the mci resources will be cleaned up.
'
'Will make sure the previous alias is destroyed. If the alias "movie" hasn't been created yet, this code will NOT cause any errors or anything. So there is no need to worry about that.
retVal = mciSendString("close movie", 0, 0, 0)
_____________________________________________
Once that is taken care of (opened a device), all you have to do is call the Play command. The codes below will Play/Stop/Pause/Resume the movie.
'
'Start Playing the movie once you've setup the device with your file.
retVal = mciSendString("play movie", 0, 0, 0)
'
'Will Stop the playback if its currently playing.
retVal = mciSendString("stop movie", 0, 0, 0)
'
'Will Pause the playback if its playing.
retVal = mciSendString("pause movie", 0, 0, 0)
'
'Will Resume the playback if it has been paused.
retVal = mciSendString("resume movie", 0, 0, 0)
_____________________________________________
Well, thats basically all there is to it to do basic Movie and/or Video playback using Visual Basic 5.0/6.0 and Visual Basic.NET 2002/2003/2005/2008. I may add a new article in the coming days on how to play the video or movie on the Windows Desktop. Till then, Have Fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.5.0/6.0), - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | 1 Comment »
Playback Music/Audio Files in VB and VB.NET (#2 - 3rd Party Libraries) - #2 of 3
By admin | May 17, 2008
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...
Well its been somewhat a long time coming but I finally got the time to add #2 of the ways to play music articles using Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET 2002/2003 and Visual Basic 2005/2008. This post is basically to describe two different librarys. The first is Bass.Dll and the second is FMod.dll.
Both of these librarys are Free as long as your application that is using them are NOT commercial or compensated. So if its a Freeware application or personal application they will grant you a license to use them. Bass.dll has a lower cost option if your making a Shareware app though. You will definitely need to read through the license agreements of each library before using them in your applications.
________________________________
BASS.DLL Audio Library
This is a very nice library for pretty much all of your music or audio needs. It plays everything from mp3's to waves and mod music. It has alot of source code and examples for Visual Basic and Visual Basic.NET. This library even gives you access to the samples that are playing so you can plot your own visualizations or ffts. I've had alot of experience with this library a couple years ago and even made the original VB.NET api and examples for the author. The .dll is very small in size (Under 100KB) so it won't bloat your application.
Author Information: BASS is an audio library for use in Windows and Mac OSX software. Its purpose is to provide developers with powerful and efficient sample, stream (MP3, MP2, MP1, OGG, WAV, AIFF, custom generated, and more via add-ons), MOD music (XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX), MO3 music (MP3/OGG compressed MODs), and recording functions. All in a tiny DLL, under 100KB* in size.
On Windows, BASS requires DirectX 3 or above for output, and takes advantage of DirectSound and DirectSound3D hardware accelerated drivers, when available. On OSX, BASS uses CoreAudio for output, and OSX 10.3 or above is recommended. Both PowerPC and Intel Macs are supported.
C/C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and MASM APIs are provided, with several examples to get you started. .Net and other APIs are also available.
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As you can see, this is a very powerful and flexible sound system. If your interested in this .dll then go to the main audio librarys webpage.
_______________________________
FMOD Music and Sound Effects System
This is another very popular sound system that is used by game makers and the like. Crysis is a newer game that uses this library. This library has been around for a very long time and has matured quite a bit. It has nearly all the features you'll ever need in a sound system. It plays most all of the common music formats as well. This library I guess would be considered a competitor to the Bass library above. The library has Visual Basic based APIs and Examples as well. I am not completely sure about Visual Basic.NET though. I don't have much experience with this sound system like I do with the Bass sound system. Below is some author information...
Author Information: FMOD Products
Why choose FMOD?
FMOD supports more hardware platforms than any other audio system - including the latest 'next gen' consoles. Consider the cost savings of not having to change code across any platform - Save months of development time.
FMOD is actively developed, with regular releases of new features. Many new requested features have been provided to customers in a very short turnaround - want a new feature, just ask!
Many customers are amazed at the personal level of technical support they get, either by phone, email or even personal visit (if applicable)
Key features:
- Fantastic sounding DSP audio engine
- Choice of low-level API or data driven API
- Built-in DSP effect suite and VST support
- Advanced features such as 2D/3D morphing
- 3D reverb support and geometric occlusion
- Performance optimized for each platform
- Comprehensive technical support
If your wanting more information about this library you can click this link to their website.
_______________________________
Well, thats all for Part #2 of this article series. Hopefully this post was useful or helpful to you in some way. Remember to always read the librarys license agreements before using them in your applications. They both allow free use in a free application. Otherwise you will need to buy a license if your using them in a commercial application.
I will put up Part #3 when I get the chance. Part three will be on using the Windows API to do some audio or music based playback using the VB languages. Till then, Have Fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.5.0/6.0), - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | 2 Comments »
How to Playback a Audio Compact Disk (Play/Stop/Pause a CD)
By admin | May 8, 2008
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Thankfully playing audio based .cda cds is a easy process and does not require having to rely on 3rd party controls. You can simply use the Microsoft Windows MCI Command Interface to do this. As you may be aware of you can do almost all of your Media based playback needs by using this interface including playing movie files. I do plan on making a new article on playing movie files in the future. I have a complete tutorial with some source code on how to use and program the mciSendString API so you can get a much deeper understanding on how it works and how to use it. Click on this link if you want to read it.
To get started you first need to setup the main API call that is required. Simply add the API below to your declarations section...
_____________________________
Visual Basic 5.0/6.0....
'
'Api call to send the commands to the mci device
Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As Long) As Long
Visual Basic .NET...
'
'Api call to send the commands to the mci device
Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, ByVal uReturnLength As Integer, ByVal hwndCallback As Integer) As Integer
_____________________________
Now that the main API call is setup and declared you need to start using it to program the device and send it commands. The first thing you need to do is create a new device and set the device to use the CDAudio driver. As you may have guessed this driver will do AudioCD playback. Below is how to create a new device using the CDAudio driver.
Note: In this article if your using VB 5/6 you only need to change Integer or Int32 types to Long types.
_____________________________
'
'This will hold the mci return value. The value in this variable will not be used in this article however.
Dim retVal As Integer
'
'This will be used to specify the drive letter of the CD or DVDRom drive to use.
Dim cdDrive As String
'This should be set to the CD or DVD drive your Music CD is in.
cdDrive = "D:\"
'
'Add quotes which will keep from having to get the short path since the mci device could fail if using the normal long file and path. Remember to set cdDrive to the CDRom or DVDRom optical drive. Specify like: D: or D:\ if D is your drive, or E: or E:\ and so on.
cdDrive = Chr(34) & cdDrive & Chr(34)
'
'Create a new CDAudio device with the alias CD. "CD" is how we will refer to the device in this program.
retVal = mciSendString("open " & cdDrive & " type cdaudio alias cd wait shareable", vbNullString, 0, 0)
'
'Send the command to set the time format to the device default. Set this so when asking for time/track information we can get the value as a Tracks/Minutes/Seconds/Frames format.
retVal = mciSendString("set cd time format tmsf", vbNullString, 0, 0)
_____________________________
Now that a device has been created to use the CDAudio driver its time to start sending some commands.
_____________________________
The code below will return the total number of tracks on the audio cd in the cd drive...
'
'This variable is used to receive the value when requesting information from the mci device.
Dim buf As String
'
'Give it a 128 space buffer.
buf = Space(128)
'
'This will get the total number of tracks returned from the device.
Dim trackCount As Integer
retVal = mciSendString("status cd number of tracks", buf, 128, 0)
'
'Get the integer value from the buffer. It will return 0 (zero) if no tracks are detected or if no audio cd is present.
trackCount = CInt(Val(buf))
_____________________________
If trackCount has the number 12 then there are 12 tracks starting at Track #1 through to Track #12. So when referring to a specific track you need to specify the exact number you want the information from.
Next you can now go ahead and start Playing, Stopping, and Pausing/Resuming a Audio CD's tracks. First you want to tell the device which track you want to play. The next set of codes will do that.
_____________________________
'
'This will hold the track number to play. It is then set to track 2 below.
Dim trackToPlay As Integer
trackToPlay = 2
'
'You need to set the time format to the cd devices default so it knows that 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on is the track number.
'Set the time format to the cd devices default Tracks, Minutes, Seconds, Frames when you are wanting to seek to a specific track.
retVal = mciSendString("set cd time format tmsf", vbNullString, 0, 0)
'
'This will tell the device to move to the track number specified. Simply put in the track number you want to play.
retVal = mciSendString("seek cd to " & trackToPlay, vbNullString, 0, 0)
_____________________________
You can now start Playing, Stopping, Pausing, and whatever it is you want to do.
_____________________________
'
'Start playing the cd at the track you already specified above.
retVal = mciSendString("play cd", vbNullString, 0, 0)
'
'Stop the cd from playing.
retVal = mciSendString("stop cd", vbNullString, 0, 0)
'
'Will pause the CD if its playing.
retVal = mciSendString("pause cd", vbNullString, 0, 0)
'
'Resumes the cd to playing if it was paused.
retVal = mciSendString("resume cd", vbNullString, 0, 0)
_____________________________
Thats ALL there is to it! IF the codes in this article was properly implemented then it should Start, Stop, Pause, and Resume an Audio Compact Disk (CD). There is MUCH more you can do with Audio CD's as well like getting the length, position, fast forward, Opening/Closing the CD Door and so on. But some of those features might be implemented in a future article.
I suggest you really go check out my MCI Command tutorial this site or a downloadable .doc version at my vbcodesource.com website so you would learn how to actually implement your own custom functionality by simply checking out the documentation at microsoft.msdn.com.
If you don't care or have the time to create your own source code for audio CD based playback then you can check out my AudioCD based class libraries. My vbcodesource.com website has MANY librarys available that greatly simplifies the task of creating a CD player based application. I even recently released a brand new library named csAudioCD Library v2.5 Pro Enhanced for Visual Basic 2005 and VB 2008 that has Over 50 subs and properties. I have libraries for VB.NET 02/03 and VB 5.0/6.0 as well. I suggest you goto my main website under the controls and examples section if your interested. There are example applications available as well on how to use the audio cd libraries.
Anyways, I hope you got something useful from this article and it was easy to understand as well. Sometime in the future I may expand on this subject by showing how to get position, duration based information and such. Have Fun!
Jason
Topics: - (.5.0/6.0), - (.NET All + 05/08), - .All VB (Related to All) | No Comments »