I've pretty much finished my GUIs and use cases - all four of them! - and I'm really exciting about actually making it work. (I'll upload my GUIs in a later post.)

I just wanted to say that I have to agree with Mara that this whole thing got a whole lot more confusing once we finished learning from the book. I understand the basic concepts that we learn in class, but I'm a lot more clueless when it comes to applying them in the coding. I just need full, written examples to work from again.

Hello all!

It's been a while since I've remembered to blog. Whoops! Anyway, I'm looking forward to learning XML today, but I'm getting anxious that it'll all be a little too complicated. As I said before, my final project will be a digest of a Wordpress blog.

I was going to initially just extract metadata on the posts rather than the actual text. But, Dr. Haines suggested that I go ahead and display the post content as well. So I'll basically be duplicating the material from the actual blog. (Of course, the interface will be much different.) In this way, the mobile device program will be most useful to users.

Well, I'll make sure to keep you all updated on my Final Project progress as well as any problems I may encounter with XML in Lab 4.

Hello all,

I just wanted to check in before spring break officially begins. Dr. Haines gave me the OK to pursue a mobile device application that functions as a digest for a blog that I contribute to: http://sexdrugsandintellectualfreedom.wordpress.com/. It's a labor of love for my colleague Tony, and I'm sure he'd want me to pass the link along. So, check it out and have a great break!

Hello everyone,

My night class was cancelled today (aparently the flu is going around) so I decided to work on Assignment 2 instead. I used case statements to code the German and Spanish phrases, and I got my program up and running with very little trouble.

I decided to follow Dr. Haines' suggestion and disable/enable buttons appropriately to help the user better navigate the form. It was easy enough.

I guess I'll practice using loops with the Chapter 6 Guided Program Development this weekend.

See you all Tuesday.

-Taryn

I'm done with the coding for Lab #2 and I thought I was pretty much on the right track, but after reading others' comments on it, I'm not sure I have it quite right. I though we were simply adding the icon to the program's GUI.

Is the icon actually supposed to be added to the PDA's start-up screen and function as a shortcut to launch the program? That would make more sense, I guess. And if that's the case, I am also unclear as to how to how to make the icon appear in design mode.

Hello everyone,

I have a few Visual Studio questions after completing Assignment 1 and the Chapter 5 guided program development exercise:

1. Is it possible to run text (like a heading) over a picturebox object in the GUI? I tried to do this in the Assignment 1 project, but I wasn't able to get rid of the background color on the "Bonita Travel Agency Translator" heading. The transparent option didn't seem to work. I ended up foregoing the picturebox object, which may have been for the best design-wise; but, I'm still wondering if this is possible.

2. Did anyone else get a "Missing End Sub" error message while coding the Ch. 5 guided exercise? I went through the code in the book and my code line by line, but couldn't figure it out. So, I wasn't able to test the application with the emulator, unfortunately.

3. Finally, is anyone else getting a little worried about memorizing all of this code? I understand it all thus far, but I'm worried about remembering all of the little details. Do any of you more experience coders out there have any suggestions?

See you all tomorrow!

-Taryn

I'm just taking the time to post before class tomorrow. I've started Assignment 1, completing the requirements document. I've also been reading Chapter 4, which seems pretty understandable so far.

The reading on leveraging mobile enterprise applications was interesting, and I'm looking forward to discussing it in class tomorrow. See you all then.

I've finished the first assignment, and I'm happy with the result, except for the appearance of the "clear weather" image. Because I was unable to control the dimensions of he image, it's much smaller than the picture box I'd sized for it and it looks awkward in the large form.

Chapter three describes how to set the SizeMode property to StretchImage so that the image displays properly. But, for the weather application, I just added the jpegs to the resources folder and then referenced them in the code. (I didn't add them in the design tab, in other words.)

So my question is: How can I resize the images in the weather application so that both the "clear weather" and "question mark" are equally sized?

Like I said in class on Tuesday, I don't have any programming experience. After making the GUI mockup in Chapter 2, I was surprised at how user-friendly Visual Studio 2005 seems to be (although I know we haven't gotten to any of the actual programming yet). The Visual Studio environment reminds me of Adobe Dreamweaver, a Web development application with which I've had some experience.

Something I hope Dr. Haines covers in the next class: How to properly save a program for future use. I'll be working on the lab computers this semester, so I'll need to know how to save projects on my USB drive. I tried saving the Guided Program Development exercise and ended up with three files, none of which allowed me to resume editing the project.