Ralph Varjabedian

Remembering Column Sizes and Forms' Dimensions and Locations easily

Ralph Varjabedian — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:52:47 GMT

A common task that I encounter when I create Desktop Applications in .NET is that I need to make all my ListCtrls and DataGridViews remember their column sizes when the end user manually changes them. Also another common task is having forms remember their Width, Height, Position and WindowState every time your form opens. I have written some code to do just this. The code is written as Extensions to the ListCtrl, DataGridView and Form classes.

To use the code, you must add the file Extensions.cs to your project. To add the functionality to a ListCtrl just call ActivateRememberListViewColumns on the ListCtrl instance. To add the functionality to a DataGridView just call ActivateRememberDataGridViewColumns on the DataGridView instance. As for adding it to your Forms, just call ActivateRememberFormSizeAndPosition on the Form instance.

The code creates a folder called Settings under your working directory and saves the state files there.

Download the sample code here

Hope this helps.

TabControl with TabPages having circular Tab Order

Ralph Varjabedian — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:37:49 GMT

A friend of mine was developing a form for data entry and this form had several pages put as TabPages in a TabControl. The normal behavior of the Tab Order in TabPages is it loops the controls of the full form and the currently selected TabPage. The problem was that his client got used to going from one control to another control using the Tab key. It was frustrating for the client not to be able to smoothly continue from one TabPage to another just by using the Tab key.

So I helped my friend by developing a class called TabPageCircularTabOrder. Instead of adding TabPage instance to your TabControl, you create an instance of TabPageCircularTabOrder and it will take care of the rest. With this class, when you enter the controls inside a TabPage it will not leave the TabControl when you pass the last control on that page, instead it will open the next TabPage and start with the first control in that page and so on (circular Tab Order within the TabPages). When all the pages are done, the Tab Order continues with the normal Tab Order of the Form. Shift + Tab also is modified to circle the Tab Order in backwards.

What turned out to be a simple task at first took quite some time, but the final code is simple and small to understand.

Download the sample code here

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any comments.

Binding ASP.NET TreeView to a DataSet or an ObjectDataSource using VB.NET

Ralph Varjabedian — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:32:11 GMT

Thank you goes for Adrien Cuisinier who has ported the C# code of this topic to VB.NET. Now you can download the sample application in VB.NET. You can contact Adrien here if you want to.

Update for Binding ASP.NET TreeView to a DataSet or an ObjectDataSource

Ralph Varjabedian — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:43:26 GMT

Hi All,

The code (the sample) that was with the post Binding ASP.NET TreeView to a DataSet or an ObjectDataSource is updated to account for columns that are of type string. Also the code now can work with DataViews and not just DataSets to enable easier binding with more sources like LINQ via the method AsDataView();

Let me know if you have any comments. Thanks.

Stop the Virus Spread on USB Flash Disks

Ralph Varjabedian — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:10:44 GMT

It is becoming very annoying sharing USB Flash Disks. Most viruses for Flash Disks copy themselves on the root of your drive and set their attributes to hidden and system and modify the autorun.inf to run itself every time the USB Drive is plugged in a computer. I got an idea the other day and so far it is working great. I opened my USB Flash Disk and added an empty file to it and saved it as autorun.inf. Then I modified its security attributes (access lists) to deny access to everybody. And then I set it to read only and hidden. By doing this, when I put my USB Drive into a computer that wants to infect my drive, the virus tries to open and modify the autorun.inf but it fails. Hope this helps.

Microsoft Server 2008 Launch in Lebanon

Ralph Varjabedian — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:59:08 GMT

For those who are living in Lebanon, Join us on the Wednesday 30th of April 2008 at the Palais des Congrés for the Microsoft Server 2008 Launch. You should register before you go. Hope to see you there.