zondag, oktober 15, 2006
Sunday afternoon sandbox
I should have gone outside, it was a sunny day in Belgium, but instead I spent my sunday figuring out Visual Studio. I created this 'sandbox' website on my local computer to get to know the tool and some of its features. I used to be a Delphi programmer long time ago, and it takes me quite some adjustment to work with VS. What strikes me is that the help is no help at all too me. When I see a button on the screen that I don't understand, pressing F1 will get me all sorts of information, but not what that button does or that particular error message or even the component I'm working with. Maybe it's my configuration settings, but at least Delphi got me directly to the answer. Anyway, I work around it by using Google as my online help during programmation and it works very well. Most answers, short and targeted explanations and sample code can be found somewhere on the net. But isn't it weird that I learn more from Google, forums and wikibooks than from the product's own integrated help? The Masie Centre calls Google 'fingertip knowledge', and I'm starting to understand what they mean :-) .
Anyway, in my sandbox experiment I'm building an online application for the many learning quotes and statements that I collected over the past months.
My progress so far includes comparing the ease of use of a MS Access, MS SQL or XML database, playing with style sheets and getting the GridView component to work as I want (and I did find a way to shorten long text and abbreviate it automatically in the table! Hurray!).
I'm going to use an MS Access one because it integrates quite good with the tool (auto-update, insert etc), and I don't want to spend money on renting an MS SQL database for this little toy application. I also like the simplicity of having it in one file that can just be copied without the need for database management tools and scripts.
Next week I'm trying to find out how to protect the site before I put it on the internet and I'll try to build a page with a random quote. And the week after that I want to turn it into a Web Service that gives you a random quote. As long as I'm learning to build a proper site, I might as well experiment with something reusable afterwards...
Anyway, in my sandbox experiment I'm building an online application for the many learning quotes and statements that I collected over the past months.
My progress so far includes comparing the ease of use of a MS Access, MS SQL or XML database, playing with style sheets and getting the GridView component to work as I want (and I did find a way to shorten long text and abbreviate it automatically in the table! Hurray!).
I'm going to use an MS Access one because it integrates quite good with the tool (auto-update, insert etc), and I don't want to spend money on renting an MS SQL database for this little toy application. I also like the simplicity of having it in one file that can just be copied without the need for database management tools and scripts.
Next week I'm trying to find out how to protect the site before I put it on the internet and I'll try to build a page with a random quote. And the week after that I want to turn it into a Web Service that gives you a random quote. As long as I'm learning to build a proper site, I might as well experiment with something reusable afterwards...
