Ian Ippolito
April, 2002: VB Explorer is back on the web again!
I'm happy to announce that VB Explorer has found a home and will not be dying.

What happened to VB Explorer?  I couldn't get to it for a while?

Burt, the founder of VB Explorer, was caught between a rock and a hard place (like most .com's today), trying to pay for the site, while advertising dried up to almost nothing.  In the end, the lack of funds did him in...but he did not want the site and his dream to die.

So, he asked me to take it over which I'll be doing over the next few weeks.   My name is Ian Ippolito, and I'm the creator of Planet Source Code and Rent a Coder.  VB Explorer is going to find a new home on our clustered servers and 4 T1s, so hopefully you will have plenty of speed and bandwidth.

Why are we back to the old style of the site?

Soren was trying to assist with pulling out the content of the new site. However, it was in a proprietary content management system, not normal .ASP pages, and I didn't have the same system installed on our servers. This made the transfer difficult to do in the brief time Soren had available.  Compounding on top of this was the fact that he is in the middle of a work emergency and is working lots of hours on his current job.  So he was able to get the old site restored from a backup (better than a blank page!)  and when things get more to normal with him I'll find out if we can upgrade the site to the newer version...
In the meantime I've recovered as much of the old site from the copy that Soren gave me. Not all pictures and links worked so I spent about 7-8 hours weeding them out and I think I got most of them. But if I missed some, I'm sure you'll let me know.

Is Vb Explorer going to change?

I'm going to be keeping the site essentially the same...it will not be rolled into Planet Source Code, because I believe the audiences are different enough that this would not be the right thing to do.  I told Burt that I would keep the site 'free' for as long as it is economically possible...which is good news for you, the site users.

11/10/00: Well, been a while since we posted any updates. Lot's of behind the scenes work still going on our upgrades to this site and the new ones we plan on launching. I added three new articles today and hope you enjoy them. If you have any friends who like VB and you haven't mentioned us -please do. Our ability to contract for paid articles from popular Visual Basic authors like Rod Stephens and John Smiley is directly related to how many people come to visit the site. With your support we'd eventually like to have authors like these writing weekly articles for us to supplement the many excellent submissions by the site regulars like Brian P Duckworth, Anne-Marie Wright and many others. So here they are -enjoy;

Using Direct3D in VB This series of articles will explain how to use Direct3D in Visual Basic. There are a lot of details to cover so I'll do it in pieces, but I think you'll find it all surprisingly easy. There are many steps to getting started, but once you get the basics down to a routine, you can ignore them and concentrate on the fun part: building graphics. This series is written for us by Rod Stephens and if all goes well (meaning enough of you like it and hopefully spread the word as well) we hope to turn this into a regular series of articles -possibly as many as one or two articles a month.

Pass Arrays to Functions and ... In last month's article, I discussed how to use a For…Each statement to 'loop' through the elements of an Array. In this article, I'll continue my discussion of Arrays by showing you how to pass an Array, as an argument to a procedure or a function, and also how to pass back a return value that is itself an Array. ~ John Smiley

Using For..Each w/ Arrays to ... This month's article was inspired by a Visual Basic tip I saw recently that touted the advantages of using LBound and Ubound functions when looping through the elements of an Array. Using the LBound and Ubound functions can be a big advantage, but even better is to use the For…Each statement. ~ John Smiley

09/07/00: A very busy day in the tutorial department with three excellent new tutorials just added.

First we have an excellent sorting tutorial by Rick Meyer. It is really two tutorials in one as he not only delves into various sorting methods but also leads you to create a sort timer to test the effectiveness of the various sorts. He does a good job of explaining a topic that can be pretty deep for a beginner and I think you'll love it. Two thumbs up and a tip of the hat to Rick for a superb tutorial!

Next we have another great tutorial by John Smiley that shows how to Execute a VB Program with Command Line Arguments. This is one of those frequently asked questions and John shows why his material is in such great demand with this interesting and easy to follow tutorial. Those who aren't familiar with John's books and articles should take a look at some of the other material in our tutorials section and Book Store.

Finally Anne-Marie Wright dives into one of those other areas beginners often ask about and gives us a basic tutorial on Using Crystal Reports with VB. Anne is currently working on a review of Crystal Reports 8 for the site and may be spinning off some additional Crystal Reports tutorials as time allows. A big thank you goes out to Anne for her willingness to tackle so many areas for us. :)

I also want to take an opportunity to publicly thank Brian, Anne, Eric, John, Soren and a slew of regulars who help out with the forums, the site, material, ideas and even friendship. Without a doubt this site would not exist without their tremendous support.

08/10/00: Through a serious oversite on my part, I never added the excellent TTT-Max project created by Brian P. Duckworth to the downloads page. This project was the end result of a dynamic tutorial we tested on the forums and produced a lot of excellent written material in addition to this project. You can find the project on the VB Multimedia & Graphic Downloads page. The very informative discussion and tutorial is also available on the forums page in the Dynamic Tutorials section.

08/07/00: Just added John Smiley's latest tutorial Creating a Toolbar in Visual Basic . Think you'll find it as useful and enjoyable as his other articles. :-)

07/25/00: Added Creating a File Dialog submitted by Anne-Marie Wright. In this article we will be emulating the file handling part of the old windows 3.1 file dialog box. This tutorial performs double duty -it not only shows you some basic functionality you may need but it is a simple article for people just starting out and allows you to fiddle with some controls, properties and events.

07/25/00: Added Using Office Applications in Visual Basic another beginner tutorial by Anne. This article shows you how to connect to Office applications using code, and very briefly touches on entering data into the files. There is a basic demo project supplied.

07/24/00: Added Random Numbers tutorial by Brian P. Duckworth. In this well written tutorial Brian puts the Randomize and Rnd statements through their paces with several interesting and useful examples. Be sure to check it out as well as our other tutorials.

07/12/00: Added Launch.zip sent in by Jason to the VB Multimedia section of the downloads page -thanks Jason!

07/12/00: Added several new examples to the downloads page. Check out Sticky.zip sent in by Mark in the General VB section. You'll also find DateX.zip sent in by Anne and Permutation.zip sent in by Neil in the String & Text section. Thanks to all! Jump to the download page here.

07/10/00: Contests!!Contests!!Contests!! You asked for 'em, you got 'em! 4 great contests featured on the VB Mega Contest 2000 page! Random drawing, browse for points and two programming challenges!

07/01/00: Added two new samples to the download page contributed by Eric D. Burdo. AppActivater in the Download/API section shows how to find, activate and maximize a previous instance of your app. AltCase in the Download/String and Text section shows how to switch the characters in a string from uppercase to lowercase alternately. You can jump to the Downloads here -thanks Eric.

06/31/00: A big day today. Not only am I almost done with the preparations for the VB Mega 2000 contest but we have three new tutorials just added to our tutorials section. The first is a new one by John Smiley MultiSelect ListBoxes. John covers all the basics on using this versatile and useful control -thanks John!

We also have two beginner tutorials sent in by a new contributor Anne-Marie Wright. Those of you who use the forums -which should be all of you- will have seen Anne jump into the fray answering many questions. She has contributed two excellent introductions. The first Database Basics ADO/DAO and the other SQL for Beginners. Many thanks and welcome aboard Anne!

All of these tutorials and more can be accessed from the Tutorials page.

06/26/00: Added two sample projects sent in by Anne-Marie Wright to the General VB section of the Downloads page. Anne joined the forums recently and has really jumped in to help out our visitors. These samples are stopwatch examples that will be useful to those with questions about getting the system time, timers and even how to build a control array at runtime -thanks Anne! :-)

06/24/00: Added a programmer's version of hangman to the site. If you need a few minutes respite from your hard work then simply click on the button. If your boss asks you can try to justify it by mentioning that all the terms are computer or programming related -if that works let me know. ;-) Since you spend so much time on the site we will be adding some Visual Basic Quiz and fun games with a programming theme. You'll be able to access them using the "Take A Break!" button when they are available -didn't want to put them with the 'serious' content. Try it out -it's tougher than you'd think! :-)

06/14/00: Added EasyDice project from the Finney Family to the General VB section of the Download page that simulates dice rolls and shows the dice (with the dots not the number). Also added an MCI based CD player control library sent in by Mark Wills; it includes a test project and functions such as OpenCD, CloseCD, GetCDID, GetCDLength, MediaPresent, GetNumberOfTracks, SetCurrentTrack and several more. Thanks guys!

06/13/00: Added an API Timer example to the API section of the Downloads page. This example sent in by Brian shows how to create a timer without using a form (which would be required if you wanted to use VB's Timer control) using the SetTimer and KillTimer API calls.

06/13/00: Added two new Newsfeeds from PlanetSourceCode to the News section. These feeds put at your fingertips the most popular and newest source code offerings from this popular site. Be sure to check it out every day!

06/12/00: Just added the code and tips from the June 2000 Newsletter to the FAQ page.

06/08/00: Added two new FAQ to the FAQ page.

06/05/00: Added the PCXRead module to the ToolBox page. This module by Dave Hng is a PCX decoder for VB. It works with 8 Bit and 24 Bit images and is quite fast -Thanks Dave!

06/05/00: Added the SplashScreen example to the General VB section of the Downloads page. This example demonstrates how to display a splash screen during program initialization. It features a minimum display time and allows the user to dismiss it prematurely using the Esc key. Thanks go out to Brian P. Duckworth for this.

06/02/00: Just added a nice Login sample to the General VB section of the Downloads page. This shows how to have a login screen before the main screen loads, how to have a 'change password' feature and update this information in the registry. It was submitted by Brian in answer to a question and as we've come to expect is well done -thanks Brian!

06/02/00: Just posted our newest article from John Smiley File Operations in Visual Basic. In case you missed the news John came onboard as a regular contributor last month. You can find this and the previous article on the Tutorials page. You will also be able to get his answers to common VB questions by subscribing to the newsletter or viewing the tips for the month extracted from the newsletter each month on the FAQ page.

05/31/00: Upgraded the Advanced Search page. Now you can also search by date range. I typically index the site once a week or whenever there have been several changes. A search might not turn up minor changes until the next time it is indexed. Remember that the Forums have their own search engine. This feature will 'get better with age' since we just moved the site a lot of the documents will unfortuantely have the file date of the transfer to the new server.

05/30/00: Added a nice Array tutorial that covers the basics of this useful programming structure. Check it out on the Tutorials page. Special thanks go out to Eric D. Burdo for this nice contribution. By the way Eric is also one of the many helpful people hanging out at our Forums so be sure to stop by and say hi! Thanks again Eric!

One thing I did fail to mention on this page was the addition of a News page on the site. This is a new feature and will be expanded with targeted news from some of your favorite VB sites and programming related newsfeeds.

05/28/00: Just posted a very nice encryption example to the Downloads/String & Text Manipulation section. Many thanks to Alexander Levakov for taking the time to provide this.

05/15/00: Work is progressing nicely on the BrainRescue.com site which should be ready to launch by the end of June 2000. For those who missed the earlier news this is a new site which will feature beginner material -similar to Visual Basic Explorer- but on many other computer and programming related issues.

Added a remote 'Rate This Site' feature to the links section so that webmasters can add it to their pages. We hope that this will encourage more rating of sites as this will help those searching for links decide what are the best choices as the section continues to grow. We will also tie the rating system into the sites award system and will be adding ratings and comment sections to the bookstore, product reviews and other key sections of the site. We hope you will take time to rate material whenever you see the 'rate this' button as these features become available.

John Smiley has come on board as a 'guru' at Visual Basic Explorer. Those who have read his books or taken his classes at ZDU know what a great teacher he is. He will be submitting regular tips and items for our newsletter and at least one tutorial each month. Check the tutorial section out for his first article.

We have also just added the code and tips from the May 2000 Newsletter to the FAQ page. Once the knowledgebase is completed we will probably move all this code into it. This will allow you to search by topic (i.e. Show All Game Code) or by keyword. We should be beta testing the knowledgebase system in the next week or so.

Be sure to check out the forums section of the site. There is some great help thanks to the regulars and moderators. We have been growing and now have over 2100 registered members on the forums and it is a great place to get your questions answered.

The rest is just the basic stuff. We moved to a new server -hopefully you will find it somewhat faster- and it is much bigger which will allow us to add more features we have planned. Let us know if you spot any broken links as we will be slowly moving the whole site to a database driven model. Added about 30 new links and so forth. More to come very soon. :)