I have a favour to ask

[Venefyxatu]

Venefyxatu comes into the room, his Venefyxatu identity slowly becoming transparent until it has completely faded away and only Erik remains. He looks around a bit uncertain without his comfortable Venefyxatu identity, but goes ahead anyway.

 

Uhh, hi. Some of you might know that I've been working and studying for my exams (they start Monday... dun dun DUUUNNN), and one of my assignments was creating a program in Visual Basic .NET

I just finished it but of course I don't want to go to school with an untested program, which is where you come in. It doesn't matter whether you know anything about computers or not - in fact, the less you know about them the better : when my teacher is going to test the program, she'll pretend to be computer illiterate, which means that everything needs to be quite clear

 

The program gets information from a (very much smallified) database (which is included) about my games collection. You can browse through the games, add, edit and delete games to/from the database, get an overview of all games or of every wallet with the games that are in that wallet, ...

 

Try it out, and try to make it crash!

If you find an error that doesn't start with "Wise man says", I'd appreciate it if you let me know. Any comments / malfunctions / language errors / ... would be well-appreciated.

 

If you want to help, you should be able to download the program here.

To install : unzip the archive and run Setup.Exe

That's it. It'll add a shortcut folder to your start menu ("Venefyxatu Soft" - cool eh? ) and an entry to your "Add / Remove programs" list where you can remove it when you're done.

 

I'd also appreciate it that anyone who wants to do this would do it fast : I have to hand it in on Monday morning! Sorry for the late notice

 

One more thing : you need the .NET framework installed on your computer for this to work (it's the way Visual Studio works, don't blame me ). I don't want to force anyone to install this, so if you don't have it, don't worry - there will be others who report bugs they find

Edit : If you run Setup.Exe and it asks you whether you want to go online to get the .NET framework, you don't have it installed. It's quite a big download, so don't feel forced to. You'll probably not need it for anything else anyway

 

Thanks a lot!

Erik starts walking away, his Venefyxatu identity becoming visible again.

 

Edit : Erik pokes his head back in. Oh yes, I forgot... if anyone likes looking at code, just ask and I'll send you the source files

Edited January 8, 2005 by Venefyxatu

[Katzaniel]

Venefyxatu, I think you're going to have trouble finding people who have .NET and don't program. Of course, I could be wrong. At any rate, if your teacher can pretend not to know computers, so can I.

 

I've written down everything I noticed, it's your perogative whether you have time or even care to change everything mentioned. All in all, very good. I found nothing major.

 

* Pretty fancy. No program of mine has ever had an installer, never mind one that lets you choose where to install, whether for yourself or everyone, or had a progress bar. The bar didn't really portray the actual time to install, but then again neither does any windows program. I'm assuming you found that in a ready-made library? It's neat.

 

* Can you hide the display on the left-hand-side on the overviews? Clicking on them makes an ugly red box appear. Clicking in the area of the box (or anywhere in the record's space except the actual text, odd) brings up a single record, which wasn't very useful and difficult (impossible?) to close.

 

* For future reference, it is possible to have values that are the same for all records in a subset appear only once. ie, In the wallet overview, you should be able to show something like this instead:

 

Wallet Number	Quantity	Maximum Quantity
1	48	48
	Game	Position
	Age of Empires 2	6
	Shogun: Total War	5
	Hitman: Codename 47	4
	Motocross Mania	2
	Serious Sam	1

 

* If I make a typo in the game title, it's impossible to fix. ----- ah, apparently you knew this already.

 

* The add game tab should probably be invisible until needed.

 

* The program should probably complain if I try to add a game to a position already used in the wallet.

 

* I'll assume that editting wallets was beyond the scope of the assignment, because I couldn't find a way to do it.

 

* Same for developers/publishers, though it makes me wonder what happens when you buy a new game - perhaps you should add a "default" or "unknown" option?

 

* When you delete all the games, perhaps you should clear the text? It's good that no unexpected errors happened when I did this (of course there were "Wise man" errors when I tried to navigate), but if weren't very smart I might get confused about the fact that a game still appears to be there. Also, trying to delete again produces two "Wise man" errors, which is all right, but the second one isn't very helpful.. you might want to see if "There is no row at position -1" shows up anywhere on its own and write a more logical explanation. (Or is this just your program repeating whatever error the database happens to throw?)

 

* Why do have an empty "tools" menu? Might want to remove that. ---- Okay, I see now that this (and next point) is explained by the fact that the Tools menu changes when you change tabs. This is not obvious (at least, I've never seen a program do this before), and I had (I thought) fully explored the program before I finally realized this. As a side effect, the search and sort are not very easy to find. I'm really not sure what you can do about this in a day or less, though... the best option, if you have the time, is probably to have all options visible but not enabled until they're usable. Then the user will know exactly what is available the first time they look at the menu. (I'm sorry, I imagine you were probably quite proud for the tricky programming that enabled the neat menu behaviour. I would have been, had I written it.)

 

* Your help file has a picture (Games -> Adding) that I don't see anywhere in the program (namely, dropdown with "sort by title" et al). Did you change how something is shown after the helpfile was made, or is my version missing something it's supposed to have?

 

* Your sorting and searching explanations in the help file both say "publisher" for all three types (ie, game, developer, publisher)

 

* The link thing is really cool.

 

* "Games.exe" does not use the icon, so it's not obvious that it performs the same function as the item in the start menu.

 

Anyway, cool. And no crashes, yay!

 

Edit: For whitespace.

Edited January 9, 2005 by Katzaniel

[Gyrfalcon]

Alright, I'm going to be lazy and not refer to Katz' post, so you might get some redundency. Sorry!

 

Otherwise, I agree with what she said, this is much more fancy then any school project I ever undertook. Only note on the installer if you have any control over it is to change the disk cost button to something like 'Space Required' or something similar, as the name makes me more think it'd cost money to install it on the computer or something.

 

1) In the help files for the program, you either use the same text or link to the same page for Browsing under Games, Developers, and Publishers. Ideally, the text should be personalized to each part of the help guide. The same goes for the Sorting and Searching sections. Since your Index goes to each of the commands, you might want to just note something about how the process is the same for all the other menus as well.

 

2) Your tab order on the main menu is odd - I'd suggest going straight down the list of options with exit as the last one. Instead, it skips from Games Overview to Browse Games through Browse Publishers before skipping to Quit before touching Wallets overview and the main menu tab. Also, if its possible to select the other tabs (Games/Developers/Publishers/Add Game), it might be a good idea to do so.

 

3) You might want to add an option to add a game on the main menu as well.

 

4) Developers | Creative Assembly, the URL is cut off on the bottom half of the second line on my display (1024x768)

 

5) Tools disappears from the menu at the Add Game tab, should likewise not be there on the main menu where there are no tools, or should be present but inactive at the

 

6) Clicking Wallet or Games Overview generates an error - most likely because I removed the ASP.NET account from my computer, as it served no purpose for my class and it annoyed me.

 

Since I can't enter the wallets to look around, I'll otherwise say it looks very good.

[Venefyxatu]

Thanks for the help - a few things I noticed after packaging the whole thing but I couldn't be bothered to change them anymore last night (it was too late ). Several others I didn't know yet and I'm going to try and correct those today.

 

Let's see :

 

Pretty fancy.  No program of mine has ever had an installer' date=' never mind one that lets you choose where to install, whether for yourself or everyone, or had a progress bar.  The bar didn't really portray the actual time to install, but then again neither does any windows program.  I'm assuming you found that in a ready-made library?  It's neat.[/quote']

 

Only note on the installer if you have any control over it is to change the disk cost button to something like 'Space Required' or something similar' date=' as the name makes me more think it'd cost money to install it on the computer or something.[/quote']

 

The installer is something I have very little control over - I can change some of the basic properties, but other than that it's all default.

 

Can you hide the display on the left-hand-side on the overviews?  Clicking on them makes an ugly red box appear.  Clicking in the area of the box (or anywhere in the record's space except the actual text' date=' odd) brings up a single record, which wasn't very useful and difficult (impossible?) to close.[/quote']

 

The overview are generated using Crystal Reports. There appears to be a button to close the treeview on the left-hand-side, so it might be possible to get rid of it in the code as well. I'll try it out!

 

Clicking Wallet or Games Overview generates an error - most likely because I removed the ASP.NET account from my computer' date=' as it served no purpose for my class and it annoyed me.[/quote']

 

That's odd - I'm going to experiment with that, but not until I'm absolutely sure I won't need Visual Studio again; I don't know if I'll have the courage to reinstall it

 

For future reference' date=' it is possible to have values that are the same for all records in a subset appear only once.  ie, In the wallet overview, you should be able to show something like this instead: ...[/quote']

I blame my poor Crystal Reports skills for this one

I'm going to give it a try, though - good point!

 

If I make a typo in the game title' date=' it's impossible to fix. ----- ah, apparently you knew this already.[/quote']

This has to do with the way the database class sorts and searches, I believe. I don't think I can change this without completely changing that class. For now, the only solution is to delete the game and enter it again

 

The add game tab should probably be invisible until needed.

*Points an accusing finger at Microsoft* Their fault Apparently there's a bug in VB.NET that prevents tabs from becoming invisible. Disabling it is the best I could do...

 

The program should probably complain if I try to add a game to a position already used in the wallet.

*groans* I knew I forgot something - checking for duplicate values in places like this. Thanks for pointing it out

 

I'll assume that editting wallets was beyond the scope of the assignment' date=' because I couldn't find a way to do it.

 

Same for developers/publishers, though it makes me wonder what happens when you buy a new game - perhaps you should add a "default" or "unknown" option?[/quote']

Actually, we were allowed to take it as far as we wanted to - I just figured I'd get the basic requirements in first (adding/changing/deleting on at least one table) before I'd go any further. Good thing I did, or it probably wouldn't have been finished yet

The default option is a good idea, though.

 

When you delete all the games' date=' perhaps you should clear the text?  It's good that no unexpected errors happened when I did this (of course there were "Wise man" errors when I tried to navigate), but if weren't very smart I might get confused about the fact that a game still appears to be there.  Also, trying to delete again produces two "Wise man" errors, which is all right, but the second one isn't very helpful.. you might want to see if "There is no row at position -1" shows up anywhere on its own and write a more logical explanation.  (Or is this just your program repeating whatever error the database happens to throw?)[/quote']

Hmm, I didn't realize that. Errors that come from the database are indeed repeated by my "Wise man"

 

Why do have an empty "tools" menu?  Might want to remove that.   ---- Okay' date=' I see now that this (and next point) is explained by the fact that the Tools menu changes when you change tabs.  This is not obvious (at least, I've never seen a program do this before), and I had (I thought) fully explored the program before I finally realized this.  As a side effect, the search and sort are not very easy to find.  I'm really not sure what you can do about this in a day or less, though... the best option, if you have the time, is probably to have all options visible but not enabled until they're usable.  Then the user will know exactly what is available the first time they look at the menu.  (I'm sorry, I imagine you were probably quite proud for the tricky programming that enabled the neat menu behaviour.  I would have been, had I written it.)[/quote']

 

Tools disappears from the menu at the Add Game tab' date=' should likewise not be there on the main menu where there are no tools, or should be present but inactive at the[/quote']

 

I was rather proud of having come up with this idea, but maybe I should indeed try to think of something a little more obvious. And to hide it on the main menu tab! I didn't realize it would be empty there as well

 

Your help file has a picture (Games -> Adding) that I don't see anywhere in the program (namely' date=' dropdown with "sort by title" et al).  Did you change how something is shown after the helpfile was made, or is my version missing something it's supposed to have?[/quote']

Hmm... the picture in the helpfile is a screenshot of the menu Tools --> Games. Unless you mean something else?

 

Your sorting and searching explanations in the help file both say "publisher" for all three types (ie' date=' game, developer, publisher)[/quote']

 

In the help files for the program' date=' you either use the same text or link to the same page for Browsing under Games, Developers, and Publishers. Ideally, the text should be personalized to each part of the help guide. The same goes for the Sorting and Searching sections. Since your Index goes to each of the commands, you might want to just note something about how the process is the same for all the other menus as well.[/quote']

 

Edit : I made a mistake in linking to the HTML files in the HelpMaker program - they all linked to the same files. That's fixed now, so the helpfile is the way it should be

 

The link thing is really cool.

Thanks

 

Developers | Creative Assembly' date=' the URL is cut off on the bottom half of the second line on my display (1024x768)[/quote']

Hey' date=' now that you mention that... it is indeed too long to fit into the label. I'll make it longer, but if a developer or a publisher has a really long URL there's nothing I can do about it without making the code more complicated

 

 

"Games.exe" does not use the icon' date=' so it's not obvious that it performs the same function as the item in the start menu.[/quote']

Uh-oh... I'll have to look around to see if I can find an option for that, because I must've missed it.

 

Anyway' date=' cool.  And no crashes, yay![/quote']

Thanks, and yay! That's a big relief

 

Your tab order on the main menu is odd - I'd suggest going straight down the list of options with exit as the last one. Instead' date=' it skips from Games Overview to Browse Games through Browse Publishers before skipping to Quit before touching Wallets overview and the main menu tab. [/quote']

Thanks for pointing that out! I completely forgot about the tab order - I didn't add the buttons in the logical order, so I'll have to change that

 

Also' date=' if its possible to select the other tabs (Games/Developers/Publishers/Add Game), it might be a good idea to do so.[/quote']

Do you mean by pressing the tab key? If so, the shortcut for changing tabs (in most windows programs, not just in mine) is Ctrl+Tab.

 

You might want to add an option to add a game on the main menu as well.

Hmm... good idea! That would be faster than having to go to the games tab first.

 

 

Since I can't enter the wallets to look around' date=' I'll otherwise say it looks very good.[/quote']

Thanks!

 

/me wanders off, knowing what needs to be done and very grateful to Katzaniel and Gyrfalcon for having pointed it out.

Edited January 9, 2005 by Venefyxatu

[Katzaniel]

That one point that you didn't know what I was talking about (the screenshot one) was because that was before I found out that Tools changes when you change tabs. So no need to worry 'bout that one.

 

As for the whole invisible/disabled things, I was hoping that it might be a matter of only one or two lines to change that. If it's not, I suspect that removing Tools from the main menu might do the trick, since the user would notice it appearing and suspect from there that it would change. At the very least, they would be able to explore a non-empty menu and would therefore have reason to check it out again after changing tabs.

[Venefyxatu]

As for the whole invisible/disabled things, I was hoping that it might be a matter of only one or two lines to change that.  If it's not, I suspect that removing Tools from the main menu might do the trick, since the user would notice it appearing and suspect from there that it would change.  At the very least, they would be able to explore a non-empty menu and would therefore have reason to check it out again after changing tabs.

It was indeed a matter of changing a few lines of code (changing visible to enabled was all that was required, really ).

 

I had fun correcting those errors today, here's what I did :

• Changed tab order on tab Main Menu
• Added "Add Game" button to tab Main Menu
• Removed treeview in the reports
• Changed Wallets Overview layout to match Katzaniel's suggestion
• Added the option to get the overviews from the menu Tools as well --> the menu is never empty now.
• The options in the Tools menu that are not available are now grayed out instead of hidden
• Changed the length of the linklabels. Too long URLs will still be clipped off though.
• Added check to see if a position in a wallet is already taken.
• If all games are deleted through the program, the error messages will still be displayed but at least the fields will be empty. It no longer looks as though the game still exists.
• Screenshots in the helpfile were updated to match the new look of the menu's
• Helpfile is now correct : not everything refers to publishers anymore
• Added "Credits" option to the Help menu listing the people who tried it out for me

Once again, my thanks for trying it out!

 

So, as I was saying : should you be curious about the final result, you can get it here.

 

I couldn't add the icon to the exe file anymore, though... the person who knows how to do this hasn't been online all day and I didn't find the option either.

Oh well... at least it works

Edited January 9, 2005 by Venefyxatu

[Katzaniel]

Nice.

 

One minor quibble you may or may not be interested in hearing at this point: This time when I delete all the games, I get a wise man error on the last one. It still deletes the game for me, and I couldn't find anything that it failed to do (well, it lets me try to edit it, but pressing OK throws a wise man error, so that's okay), yet it gave me an error. Like I said, pretty minor for this stage of the game.

 

Other than that, looks GREAT! I forgot to mention earlier how much I liked the fact that the exit button turns red on mouseover. Nice touch. Glad to hear the menu fix wasn't too hard, and you were able to use your original neat code and still keep an intuitive interface.

 

For curiosity's sake, is Minty Fresh Man (or whatever his name was) someone on these boards?

 

Oh, and I just wanted to say that thanks to your earlier post, I have finally discovered how to quote someone without clicking "quote" on their post, I had actually thought it must not be possible.

 

Bee-ay-yoo-tiful!

[Gyrfalcon]

Whoohoo, I'm credited!

 

Quibbling on the help files again, sorting and searching for all three still reference publishers, but that's just minor quibbling.

 

Otherwise, the help files are excellent, good use of screenshots to explain what you're doing.

 

I agree with Katzaniel, I like the way Quit goes red when you go over it.

[Venefyxatu]

Quibbling on the help files again, sorting and searching for all three still reference publishers, but that's just minor quibbling.

Whew, good thing I checked the Pen this morning before bolting off to school. Apparently I'd updated the helpfiles, but forgotten to copy them so that Visual Studio could package the updated version into the installer. Fortunately that was easily corrected

 

The program got installed, the source files copied, now all I have to do is wait for the exam...

 

Oh, and I just wanted to say that thanks to your earlier post, I have finally discovered how to quote someone without clicking "quote" on their post, I had actually thought it must not be possible.

Glad you learned something as well in this thread

 

Thanks for the compliments, and the other comments

Minty Fresh Man (you got that right) is someone I met on a forum about Bluejacking.