Visual Basic Programmer

VISUAL BASIC Programmer SKILLS

Visual Basic.Net

I have set up a Library of Procedures consisting of various Classes and Modules to add functionality when programming in VB.Net.

These provide the essential tools for programmer productivity. See the page on Reusable Code – A Management Issue

Printing: The new Visual Basic.Net procedures for printing are powerful and offer many new and wonderful features. However a large amount of time and in-depth expertise is needed to print a single line. This Printing Class inherits the PrintDocument control, and emulates the previous VB6 printing facilities, allowing Printing to be as simple as before:

• For each print line, the font, size and colour can be set.
• Input text can handle single line input (as for VB6), or multiple lines.
• The Font can be Bold, Italic, Strikeout, Underline or any combination.
• The line height is adjusted for different size fonts.
• The Margins and the Landscape mode can be set.
• Optionally select the printer from a Dialog.
• Optionally draw a box around the text, and in any colour
• It has automatic Page numbering .
• Page numbering is optional

Website Search Engine Optimisation Analysis Program: Checks all facets of a Website to enhance rankings. The program includes:

• Keyword Density analysis
• Keyword Hierarchy
• Links and their Tags
• Images and File size
• Spelling per page, or for the entire Website
• Meta Tags
• Page response time
• Delete Temporary Internet files
• W3C Validation
• Google Ranking
• Keywords popularity

The Website Search Engine Optimisation Analysis Program was written in Visual Basic.Net 2010, using the WebBrowser control.

Error Routine: Allows simple and consistent error handling:

• Just one line Display_Error(Err, e) required in the Catch procedure.
• Displays the full Error Message
• Displays the line number of Crash
• Displays the Project, Module and Procedure names.
• Logs the error.

DataGrid: A Class created to allow the programmer to easily set up a Grid in code. The features are:

• Add Columns at run-time.
• Set style for any column – read-only, width, auto-number, alignment, formatting, caption, etc.
• Set Font and colour.
• Add unbound Rows

Backup: All changes each day are backed up to Disc. The functions are:

• The program deletes the saved files after a specified period.
• The user is emailed after each backup.
• The backup can be scheduled at any regular interval.
• Changed files can be unarchived.

Folder Browsing: This routine uses the Windows Browse API. The functions are:

• Browse for Folder.
• Browse for File.
• Create new Folder.
• Return Folder, File or Path.
• Set Start Folder.

ADO Access: The VB6 ADO module was converted for use with VB.Net, using the classic ADO and also ADO.Net. The functions converted were:

• Read Connection string.
• Open and Close the Database.
• Nz function for handling Null fields.
• Get Recordset using SQL.
• Get Recordset for a Table.
• SqlDataReader to retrieve SQL Server rows.
• OleDbDataReader to retrieve Microsoft Access rows.
• Execute an SQL statement.

ADO Control: A Visual Basic.Net 2010 class was created to emulate the Access Table browse routine. The programmer simply provides the recordset. The features are:

• Automatic justification depending upon data type.
• Automatic formatting depending upon data type.
• Automatic field insertion depending upon the Field name.
• First record, Last record, Next record and Previous record buttons.

FileSystemObject: Various File utility routines created to:

• Extract Parent Folder name.
• Extract File name from Path.
• Provide File Size, File Extension.
• See if File exists, with time-out.
• Delete a file.
• Read/Write text file.
• Find all Files in Folder or SubFolders.

Odd Utility Routines

• Print Screen.
• Copy Screen to Clipboard.
• Execute Commands.
• System Information.

Search program SupaFind

• The folder search program SupaFind was converted to VB.Net.