Larry OBrien's Q&A profile

• Visual Basic 2 Pics Transparant with each other

  I was wondering how to make two pictures transparant with each other. In other words when one picture is slightly over the other how do you make the top one transparant so you can see the other one as well, Instead of seeing it being blocked out. I am working on a game and when you move the character around I don't want every object to appear as a box. I am using .gifs because of their transparancy. I have made the .gifs transparant and the picture boxes background color transparant, but everything is still a box Thanks, White Hawk So I would paint the graphics on the form, moving and animating them as needed I also would need to dispose the graphic before I paint the next frame, correct So ...Show All

• SQL Server Newbie needing help -> poll a folder for new files

  I need to create a SQLNS app to poll a particular folder for mpeg files. When a new file (which in this case will be an mpeg video file) is dopped into the folder, I need to write some of the files metadata (filename, size, path) to an existing SQL database on the same server. I'd also like to send out an e-mail notifying that an end-user that a record was added to the database. The subscription piece (e-mail notification) seems easy enough. I'm curious about the implementation of inserting the file metadata into the database. I'm pretty new to SQLNS, so any help to point me in the right direction would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance! Hi - If it were me, I'd probably investigate the following d ...Show All

• Software Development for Windows Vista Windows SDK installer fails (v6.0.6000.0 RTM)

  I have downloaded the 1.15gb RTM windows installer twice now (the standalone not web download) and get the same message about an invalid digital signature. The file it fails on is \Setup\WinSDKDocNetFx-WinSDKDocNetFx-common.6.cab. I can't imagine I downloaded it and got it corrupt twice in the same place. Is your installer ok I can't do the web download due to proxy/firewall issues. Kerry Hi Jason, Problem solved, and yes, seems it's because of bad downloading. I downloaded the .img file again and saved it to another place of disk, so I got 2 copies, but both are bad copies, one reported the number 6 .cab is bad and the other reported number 3. So I extracted all files from one of the images ...Show All

• Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) XAML design error in rendering after mapping my CLR-Namespace

  I have a XAML window and I’ve also created a xaml user control. In order to use the user control in the window I need to declare my CLR namespace in the window like this: < Window x:Class = " myCsharpDnD.Window1 " xmlns = " http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation " xmlns:x = " http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml " xmlns:local = " clr-namespace:myCsharpDnD;assembly= " Title = " myCsharpDnD " Height = " 300 " Width = " 300 " > This compiles and the app runs like I would expect. However, the window’s designer no longer renders a UI and I get the ‘Whoops!” error msg: “Visua ...Show All

• Visual Studio Express Editions are methods called asynchronously in the same thread better than those called in another thread?

  i was just wondering since calling methods asynchronously in the same thread acts just like calling the method on another thread. so which is better or preferred by you programmers out there are methods called asynchronously in the same thread better than those called in another thread ReneeC Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. With everyman I just meant everyone. I know that you are a woman, and I have nothing against female programmers. My wife is a programmer too (embedded multitask systems), and one of the first multitask operating systems in Denmark (approximately 1977) was also written by a woman - Bodil Skroeder as far as I remember. I do not regard you as a software nerd. Being from the old days you have learned how to ...Show All

• Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc. Model Position Problem

  I have this code that creates a model at the position of the mouse click but the model never shows up at that position. Maybe someone out there knows why the models seem to be offset. If I click in the top left corner of the screen, the model shows up in the center of the window. Here is the code: #region Using Statements using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Storage; using System.Collections; #endregion namespace Commander { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> ...Show All

• Visual Basic Fix The Startup Location Of Form

  May i know how to fix a startup location of form when i dim and show the form I don't really want to specify the x,y. i want it to be bounded always to the left of form providing the form can be dragged and moved to the other place. Thank you. You can set a startup position via the form's .StartPosition property. Set it to CenterScreen or Manual or whatever you want. If the form needs to be stuck onto the left side of the screen, then only specify the y and not the x Public Class Form1 Private Sub Form1_Move(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Move Me.Location = New Point(0, Me.Location.Y) End Sub End Class ...Show All

• Commerce Server Guidelines for Marketing Reports

  Hello, I'm using CS2007 to serve banners on a website. I'm looking for some guidelines to provide my client advertising statistics, mostly concerning Ad Requests. I already setup a SQL Server 2005 Report Server, but i can't get any info on how to configure it to get the CS2007 banner information. Any help will be greatly apreciated. Thanks. Hello Alan, I was able to process sucessfully some log files (the Report Server shows the data correctly), but now i have specific log files that are not imported, even though the Data Warehouse Import Wizard doesn't show any errors whatsoever (in this case I'm manually selecting the log files). Also, if i choose for the Import Criteria "All logs since last impor ...Show All

• Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) how can i switch off the default design mode

  hi, everytime i open an xaml file in cider, vs tries to display it in design mode.  this is annoying since it takes quite a lot of time until the design is displayed or i get the "whoops" error message. can the i change the default view mode of xaml files to edit mode thanks, bkohler  Right, the tabs on the bottom are all owned by the Cider designer, and instantiating the designer as the "Open With..." setting is what gives you those tabs. Lose the designer, lose the tabs. There is currently no way to change which tab is active by default when the designer is brought up. The good news is that the XAML editing tab in the designer is the same as the normal XAML editing surf ...Show All

• Windows Forms Arrow Keys on a User Control in .Net 2.0

  If I have a form and want to trap keyss, I can use the KeyDown event to trap and detect which keys are used. This includes the arrow keys. However when I want to do the same with a UserControl placed on the form, all keys are detected except the arrow keys. 1.Why do the arrow keys not generate the even on a UserControl 2 Is there a way to make arrow keys generate an a KeyDown or KeyPress event on a UserControl 3. If not, what event if any is generated by the arrow keys on a USerControl Thanks Steve Thanks for the reply. Its complicated but a simple answer is i need the user control to trap all keys, including and especially arrow keys to forward them to a non Windows Forms control h ...Show All

• Visual Studio 2008 (Pre-release) Disabled (grayed) image in button

  Hi, I want to disable a button and I want that the Image inside it turn to grayscale. Just disabling the button doesn't do it. I then tried using FormatConvertedBitmap to generate the gray image using this code: BitmapFrame bf = BitmapFrame.Create(new Uri("pack://application:,,/plus_ena.png")); FormatConvertedBitmap fcb = new FormatConvertedBitmap(); fcb.BeginInit(); fcb.Source = bf; fcb.AlphaThreshold = 0; // tried 0, 1, 10, 100... doesn't change anything fcb.DestinationFormat = PixelFormats.Gray16; //tried all gray formats fcb.EndInit(); image1.Source = fcb; The result is gray but I lose transparency so it's not good. I also tried ColorConvertedBitmap, using this code: Bitma ...Show All

• Visual Studio Team System .dbproj files to be read inside a Developer Edition of VSTS?

  At my workplace we have a number of editions of VSTS, one of those being the new Database Projessionals version for our DBA. We used to create a Database project, then had an app to combine all the .sql files into a master file for execution against our development server. It seems now that this new project type can better integrate into our build server and we will no longer need to use this sql joiner app. Regardless, all developers could view the standard Database project, but these new SQL Server 2005 (.dbproj) files are unreadable by the Developer edition of VSTS. While developers won't be doing many database changes, it's nice for us to be able to get latest and do small changes with code review on our databases, but moving to this ...Show All

• Visual C# automatic text file creation

  I'm using the IO namespace and i need to have a text file created if it doesn't exist, im not sure how to do this i had found a good example on this site the other day but didn't think i needed it at the, and now that i do need it and ive spent hours looking for i cant seem to find it. so if anyone could help explain the code needed to create an if statement that would create the text file if it didn't exist already There is several ways you can achieve that. First you could do an if statement to see if the file exists like so : if ( File.Exists(path) ) or you could tell the filestream object to "OpenOrCreate" when instanciating it, like so: FileStream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode.OpenOrCr ...Show All

• Windows Forms Printing scrollable ListView with PrintForm component

  I have been trying to use the new PrintForm component in VS2005 to print forms in my VB.NET Windows application. I am running into two problems: 1) I can not print the content of a scrollable ListView. Let's say I have a ListView control on the form I want to print. I print the form using the following code: Me .Main_PrintForm.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPrinter Me .Main_PrintForm.Print( Me .ActiveMdiChild, PowerPacks.Printing.PrintForm.PrintOption.FullWindow) which does print the form, but the content of the ListView is cut off to only the visible part of it. I want to print all the elements of the ListView including the ones that are not visible to the user that they would have to scroll down in the ListView ...Show All

• SQL Server SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON SET ANSI_ NULLS ON

  SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO I see these in old procs and samples... still using 2000 and trying to re-learn. I don't understand the BOL explanations and wondered why these are included, if the are necessary, and what they do. thx Kat So my remaining question, especially moving into 2005, should I include these in my procs or leave them out They may clear sense to me now, thank you! thx, Kat ...Show All