Resources for 05-630/05-430, Programming User Interfaces, Spring, 2004

Introduction:

This page is designed to provide useful links and data about the topics in the course 05-630/05-430, Programming User Interfaces, Spring, 2004 (in addition to the required and recommended readings in the schedule, and the required textbooks).

Please send me new material to add to this list, and let me know which of the items listed here are particularly useful or not useful.

Flash MX Resources:

• Andy's tutorial, given on March 25th in class. Covers most of the basics of Flash. The Keynote version (8.1 MB) was presented in class. The PowerPoint version (3.4 MB) may be ugly, but it has the Flash embedded. The PDF version (6.7MB) isn't animated, but its smaller.

• The Rudolph Flash document. This is the completed version with both eyes following and a function button nose.

• Foundations Macromedia Flash MX at Amazon. A good beginner's guide to Flash.

• These are four additional tutorials (by James Fogarty, last year's TA). They may come in use in doing the Flash warmup assignment:

  • Additional tutorial 1 (3.3 MB). Covers much of the same material as Andy's tutorial, including frames, layers, and symbols. Also covers motion tweening

  • Additional tutorial 2 (1.4 MB). Covers animated buttons and multiple scenes.

  • Additional tutorial 3 (648K). Covers important an image into the library and shape tweening.

  • Additional tutorial 4 (1.1 MB). Covers static, dynamic, and input text fields.

On-line Visual Basic resources:

• Microsoft's Visual Basic.NET Language Tour. This contains language walkthroughs, program structure and code conventions, and language features. It also demonstrates object-oriented programming, how to process files, and exception handling, which are advanced issues. Consider this the definitive free VB.NET resource.

• Visual Basic Quick Reference.
  James Fogarty's slides from last year. Note: this is a VB6 tutorial, and VB.Net is significantly different.
  In-class Demo (1/15/04)
  Sample program using arrays
  

• http://www.visualbasicbooks.com/vb6introtutorial.html - tutorial for first VB 6 program. Also has lots of Visual Basic Links, including source code samples.

• http://www.garybeene.com/vb/tutor.htm - VB 6 beginner, intermediate and advanced sections

• http://www.vbtutor.net/vbtutor.html - tutorial for VB

• http://cuinl.tripod.com/tutorials.htm - VB 6

• http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/5707/vbasic.html - (doesn't say which version)

• http://www.a1vbcode.com - lots of code samples, with VB tips and forums

• http://www.vbcode.com - more code samples

Help With Arrays from Our TAs:

Some people asked about using arrays and writing one event handler for multiple controls. You don't need to be able to do it for the first assignment, but you will have to use arrays for the second assignment. See this sample program that uses arrays.

Books about Visual Basic .net

See the list at: http://visualbasic.about.com/library/blgtvbbegina.htm