[thursdayniac]

Hi all,

So I have an application that makes a web service call to a website to get some text to display in a text box.
My application is a win forms application.
I have a few questions:

#1: There is a link that comes through in the text that I want to make clickable in my winforms app textbox. Can I do this with a normal textbox? If not, can I do this using a rich text box?

#2: This text that I get from the web service is originally displayed on a webpage, so the text comes back with HTML tags. Currently, I use a regex to strip the HTML tags. Is there a way in winforms to display HTML?

thanks

[tlhIn`toq]

Don't use a textbox unless you want the user to be able to type in it.
Too often people use textboxes just to display text and that isn't the right use of a tool.

Consider a LinkLabel. That's its job in life.

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 16 August 2011 - 10:33 AM

[thursdayniac]

I've been hearing about a WebBrowser control that can display HTML in a winform. Would this work, does anyone have experience with this control?

[tlhIn`toq]

Yes, the purpose of a WebBrowser control is to display HTML/Webpages.

You've been 'hearing' about it?

Just look in the Toolbox. Its right there.

Also, look it up on MSDN and learn about it before you just drop it on a form and try to figure it out.

Though, personally, it sounds more and more like you should be working your way through tutorials before you try to build a scratch project.

Just an observation. If you had gone through a "Learn C# in 21 days" type of self-teaching book you would have picked this up. So I am guessing you are trying to teach yourself without first going through a book or tutorial: Just jumping in and trying to design and build a program right off the bat. That really is the hard way to go.

Don't try to create a useful working program to fit a need of yours (or a for-pay contract) as your introduction to coding project. When you are learning to code you don't know enough to code a program, let alone know how to engineer the architecture of a program. It would be like saying "I don't know how to read sheet music, or play an instrument. I think I'll write a 3 act opera as my first learning experience."

We don't say this to be mean. We've seen lots of new coders take this approach and we know it doesn't work. Trying to design your own programs before you understand the basics of the code language you've chosen just leads to problems, frustrations, and 'swiss-cheese' education (lots of holes).

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Aug 2011

---

Spoiler

The problem with taking on large, complex tasks when you are new to coding is that

• It will frustrate you to the point of quitting. We don't want you to quit. We want you to succeed and learning how to code and engineer software.
  
• You don't know enough about coding to know where to start or in what direction to design your program
  
• You risk learning via the 'Swiss cheese' method where you only learn certain bits and pieces for the one project but have huge holes in your education.

Finding answers to specific problems:
Sometimes just knowing where to look can make all the difference. Google is your friend.
Search with either "C#" or "MSDN" as the first word: "MSDN Picturebox", "C# Custom Events", "MSDN timer" etc.
How to do a good search that will get you targeted answers.

Don't think you are the first person to ask a question. Try a search on this site to see if someone has already brought up this problem. Also, as soon as you post your question go to the bottom of the updated page: You will see where the system has already analyzed your question and tried to find similar threads for the same question, so check those links out.

But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5
is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts


D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Quick and easy custom events
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
Passing values between forms/classes

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread

And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so
Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article


I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.

Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5
Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010

Let me also throw in a couple tips:

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.
  btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like Index, TimeOut, Row, Column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is usually better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, and so on like this guy:
  
  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 16 August 2011 - 11:31 AM

[thursdayniac]

Uh, im not new to coding or to C#. I am a software developer at a major securities firm. I just have never had to display HTML in a desktop application before. I'm aware that the webbrowser control is already available for me to use, I just feel like I learn better from forum posts than I do MSDN documentation.

[tlhIn`toq]

Everyone learns differently, that's for sure.

I have this tendency to search, get a little guidance or an example, then drop a component on a form in a test project then work the living daylights out of it. That's me: I learn by doing.

I see you've been here a couple years, certainly by now you know you can search DIC for instances of such questions coming up in the past.

Going to the C# tutorials and doing a search of that forum gets you this WebBrowser tutorial in about 10 seconds.

http://www.dreaminco..._hl__webbrowser

[thursdayniac]

Well then I apologize for this thread. I am pretty new to Visual Studio/.NET... and UI stuff in general. For some reason, I tend to learn more by reading specific responses to my specific questions than I do reading tutorials/documentation. Next time, I'll search DIC b4 I post

[Curtis Rutland]

Don't take it personally. Some people do learn differently.

One thing I've found is that I'm good at researching. I didn't start out knowing all the answers I gave. Somehow I was able to find answers to questions people had. I wasn't any smarter than them, I just know how to use google/msdn to find what I need.

I suggest always hitting the MSDN for pages about a control/class that you're using or looking at using. They'll always, at the bare minimum, have all the methods/properties/fields/events on an object, and usually have a description and sample usage. That's where I'd start.

[tlhIn`toq]

A snippet from that resources text I gave you earlier expands on what Curtis is saying.

Quote

Finding answers to specific problems:
Sometimes just knowing where to look can make all the difference. Google is your friend.
Search with either "C#" or "MSDN" as the first word: "MSDN Picturebox", "C# Custom Events", "MSDN timer" etc.
How to do a good search that will get you targeted answers.

When someone, anyone, gives you resources don't get offended even if it says 'for new people'. You said yourself you are new to VS and .NET and UI design. If someone gives you resources you already know, then great because you can skim them quickly for any new little tips/tricks. Leaving you more time to concentrate on the areas that are new to you.

If you know an area then working the tutorial doesn't take long.
If working a tutorial does take a while, then its teaching you something new.
Either way its not a waste of time.