[2005] Adding a help file on a button click?

before you even say it, this article makes less than no sense and might as well be written in Japanese since they decided to take everything about APIs out of the curriculum this year in my VB advanced class :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
our teacher did however show us how to add a CHM file as a help thingy but I didn't write it down and it's not on his website like he said but I do remember it being a hell of a lot easier than that article. It was like 3 lines! Isn't there just like a help.open() method where you feed in the path to the CHM file? Of course there isn't because nobody reads the help file anyway so Microsoft figured they'd make it really, really hard to add help. So I hope one of you knows how to just make my CHM file pop up in the standard help window when I click a button :eek2:

I really don't know why you go bashing Microsoft everytime you have a problem coding something.

Especially when this time its because you "forgot to write something down"

That MSKB article makes perfect sense, but as you said, you simply do not know how to read and interpret the information because you have not learned about APIs. Is that Microsoft's fault?? Come on...

Not to mention the fact that the article was written for VB4, and you are using VB8

If you simply want to launch a CHM file, then you just launch it as a process.
See this thread from earlier today that is the exact same thing, just with a .hlp file

I bash Microsoft because they made a language and then refuse to let people know quickly how to do stuff with it. The MSDN library took years to make and they couldn't have possibly made it less helpful if it was all anime comic strip based. And if you sit and think about why they would do that, it's because then no software vendor would make money. For example, if everyone could just type "screenshot" and "create Avi file" into the msdn library and get multiple approaches for screenshotting the screen and then adding images to an imagestream and writing it out to an avi file or however that works (I forgot, never got it working actually) then the 100 different free trial, pay to use packages like camtasia, fraps, and Bulent's would go down the toilet as soon as one person creates a free program to do that. I don't know what kind of conspiracy there is that there's not one single fully free one out there but the people who know how to write it properly must guard the secrets pretty well and Microsoft refuses to help one bit even though its their damn language. I also suspect they do this to keep specialized programming book authors in business. THAT is my problem with Microsoft. THEY MADE PROGRAMMING TOO HARD TO LEARN ON PURPOSE AND THEY HELP INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY HOARDERS! :eek2: And the frameworks suck.
But anyway, that did work though I know it's not the way the teacher showed us. I can't imagine how it doesn't bring up an open file with dialog box on some machine (in fact, I bet it does) but if it works on my system that's good enough.

that really must be you in your signature picture.

Everything you just wrote was so far off from the truth and you obviously have no desire to learn. You want all the code handed to you done so you can badge your name on it and sell it.

I honestly have to question how much you never know about programming itself, because Microsoft's documentation for its programming languages is superb. While they do sometimes provide specific examples of code, often they do not because its simply not needed. It's documentation on the classes and what they do, not a "how to program" book.

Like most other programmers, I can dig right into the MSDN and find exactly what I need, and use that in conjunction with what I know about programming to write the code I need to.

Perhaps its your programming knowledge that is lacking, not the MSDN documentation.

Why are you even taking a VB programming class?

I know plenty about programming! Apparently I even know more about making a helpful resource system than they do. It's like they got done and said "yep, all the info about the entire VB language (and others) is in there" and then the users said "but we want to be able to type on a topic we don't know much about" and they said "ohhhhh, we thought we were writing it for people who already knew how to do what topic they searched for"
I absolutely DO NOT want to see code example, not only because all of theirs are unreadable crap that's not written how 99% of real programmers would do it but also because I want to create my own way of doing things that I think is best and makes the most sense to me.
I don't think you're getting my point quite yet so I know what will take you out of everything-is-peachy-dreamland. If I told you right now to write from scratch, start to finish, a program that simply shows a control that bounces eq bands up and down in accordance with the frequencies contained in whatever's playing out of the speakers using GDI like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ator144/eq.jpg
perhaps you remember when I posed that challenge on the forum before. Even people on the MSDN forums had no idea at all. I gaurantee you'd be at it for weeks and probably would never figure it out without buying some sort of book or a custom control from someone. If you even just put "resize bitmap object" into the MSDN library, you won't get anything even close to helpful or related. Of course, if you knew what command shrinks bitmap objects, you could type that in and get details on it instantly but if you already knew how to use it and what it did, why would you look it up?! The most basic tasks aren't even given a summary overview on how they work. I do NOT want a full code example of how to write the EQ program but I couldn't even get an explanation of how to access sound data at all, which is all I would have needed because I know all the math and other code necessary. So there you go, proof that the MSDN library is only helpful is you already know what you're doing.

You are looking at the MSDN like it is a book on how to program. Its NOT. Stop thinking of it that way.

The MSDN .NET information is first and foremost DOCUMENTATION. It documents all the classes that make up the .NET framework. Lists all their methods, properties, the dll they are located in, what exceptions they throw, their location in the inheritence chain, etc...

If I wanted to write a control from start to finish to display an audio spectrum, I wouldn't even go near the MSDN to get started. First I would do research around the web. That isn't the type of information I would expect to be in the MSDN. However as soon as I got to something specific within that project, the MSDN would be my first source of reference.

How do you think software that has audio spectrums in it got written? They obviously figured it out didn't they...

Maybe they used the MSDN documentation on Waveform Audio Reference

Oh wait, that might require some API coding, so I guess MS sucks again right because you don't know how to use APIs.

Next part of your post:

Why would you search for "resize bitmap object" in the MSDN? What myself (and 99% of other programmers would do) would be to look up the bitmap class in the MSDN, which would show all the members/properties of the bitmap object.

There you would come across the constructors documentation for the bitmap object.
Hey look, there is one that takes an existing bitmap object, and a size, and creates a new bitmap object from the original, but with the size specified.

Boy that was sure hard, it took me all of 5 seconds to find it.

You need to see that the MSDN DOCUMENTATION is just that, and shouldn't be expected to be anything more. The MSDN itself (which stands for Microsoft Developer Network) is more than just documentation. It's everything at msdn.microsoft.com, which is also forums, and TONS of example code and downloads.


I love how you are a kid in school taking a programming class, yet you know what 99% of other programmers do.. that is simply amazing...

I have been programming over 7 years, and I work for a software company, and I don't event know what 99% of other programs do.

:D so you're saying that once someone becomes a programmer and let's just imagine they know everything about programming in general, they STILL don't have enough knowlege to know how to write any specialized program at all and there is no other way to find out how to write a program to do ______ than to find someone who already did it and rip off their code. But then where does the code originate from in the first place....hmm....so the original designers of each programming language technically write all software and anyone else is just ripping off their ideas because there is seriously no other way they'd know how to do certain things? I think that's actually true. What a crap system that is! If they'd just make a giant resource center that told you how to do everything in a language then people would actually be able to...you know...write their own software to do stuff instead of paying for the info on how to do it, stealing it, or getting it free from someone who's pretending like they invented it. But like I said, they wouldn't want to do that because then everyone would make software and at least one person would give it out for free and bye bye profits for every software developer and book seller. That's why it's my goal to figure out how to do all sorts of stuff then totally give it out for free, source and all. I'm gonna piss off sooooo many software developers that sell their products hehehe :D I've already got enough information to make a mass picture resizer (for thumbnails and stuff) that can also add watermarks or other overlays. It'll be on winsite.com and maybe download.com for free by January :D and I know at least 5 vendors that will be -> :mad:

Yeah I am sure your picture resizing software is going to make professional commercial software vendors mad...

There are already probably 1000 free ones out there, so I don't think there being 1001 is going to make much difference to them. You won't be putting Adobe out of business any time soon.

I don't think you are even reading what I am writing in my posts, because if you had, then I figured you might understand by now, but you still do not.

Where does all the code come from? People write it.. where do you think?

I am sure you just went around and found other peoples code to resize pictures and what not, and you slapped it together in a windows form.

When I need to write an application, I sit down, outline what the application is supposed to do, figure out what technologies I will need to employ to get the program done. Then I setup test beds for any various things my program will need that I am unfamiliar with, so I can figure them out there instead of inside the actual app I am writing. Then I put it all together and have a finished product.

You are the only person I have come across, that can't wrap your mind around the simple concepts of the MSDN help system, and what it IS and IS NOT.

Quote:

---

A bad workman always blames his tools

---

I taught myself VB.NET from scratch with MSDN as my primary resource. If I can do that then a smart person like yourself should have no trouble using it to complement what you're learning in class. I don't claim that you find everything you need there, and neither do Microsoft, but it does have the majority.

As kleinma has pointed out several times, the MSDN library is a REFERENCE, i.e. feature-based documentation. You're expecting it to be a how-to manual, i.e. task-based documentation. There is still a large amount of task-based information in there but that is not its primary role.

The idea is that you get a feel for what types you need to use from either MSDN, the Web in general or some other source, then you look up those types on MSDN and it will tell you everything that that type can do. It's then up to you as the software developer to put those capabilities to suitable use. For example, any sort of cursory investigation on imaging in .NET apps would lead you to the Image and Bitmap classes. Once you know about them you do as kleinma suggested and within seconds you know how to resize a bitmap.

As for finding information on MSDN on how to write an EQ program, that's completely ridiculous. Why would Microsoft waste their time on something so specific when probably less than 1 in a million people would ever use it? They do provide information on manipulating sound and they do provide information on displaying images, so it's up to you to make the connection between those two to create something useful.

Getting back to your original question about displaying help files, I just went to MSDN and searched for show help ".net". The very first page of results contained a lot of irrelevant topics from "The .NET Show" but it also contains a topic entitled "Help Class (System.Windows.Forms)" that is described thusly:

Quote:

---

You can use Help to show compiled Help files (.chm) or HTML files in the HTML Help format.

---

Click on the link and it has a description of the class and a code example. There you go. Proof that Microsoft have actually made it very, very easy to add help and that MSDN can be used easily to find out exactly how to do it. The problem is in fact that you are incapable of performing an appropriate search.

If you persist in whining about Microsoft and MSDN this way then many around here will simply decide that you just don't deserve help. Some may already have come to that conclusion. If you can't work out how to use the reference documentation then maybe programming is just a bit beyond you and you should try something more suited to your talents.