Whiteboard/Chat app help

[csbarone]

Im looking to make a desktop app that will be similar to the doodle function in yahoo messenger but with a loaded background image to draw on. I was thinking of using a P2P/IP chat on the side. Is this possible? if so does anyone have any links to some examples. Im just starting with vb most of my coding has come from actionscript

[jmcilhinney]

So what exactly is the question? Is it the drawing part or the communication part that you need help with, because they are two completely separate topics and would belong in separate threads. You'd probably want to use the TcpListener and TcpClient classes to setup the communication. Once that's done then you can send anything you like. You simply have to convert it to a known binary form so that it can be read and reconstructed at the other end.

[csbarone]

Well the question is both. Like i said im just starting out in VB I've only had it for about 3 days now, so any examples or tutorials on how to draw would help I figured that would be the easier part of the two. I wasn't sure what exactly could be sent this way, if it would only accept string elements or if i could get images to transfer.

Thanks for giving a starting point to look into. I'll try to find info on using the TcpListener and TcpClient and if you have any tutorial or example links on this that would be great.

[jmcilhinney]

It's obviously harder when you're just starting out but consider what parts your problem is made up of first. If I wanted to climb Mt Everest I'd have to first get to Nepal and then climb the mountain. Obviously the two must both be accomplished to get to the top but they are very different problems. Travel agents can help me with the first part but they have no mountain climbing expertise. This is similar in that drawing and communicating over the internet are about as unrelated as topics could be within the scope of VB.NET programming.

With regards to the drawing part, you might like to follow the CodeBank link in my signature and find my Simple Drawing thread. It draws simple lines but the principle can be extended to rectangles, ellipses, etc. You'd then need to convert the drawing to some suitable binary format and then send a Byte array over the internet, just as you would for any other data.