Pure Newbie Question :)

[jgomes]

I've been programming VB for quite awhile and now I have been thinking about working on new (ones I haven't used) programming langauges.

I just have a few questions if you guys don't mind me asking .

1. How similar is VB and InterDev?

2. Does InterDev contain none, a little, some or a lot of C Programming?

3. Give a few examples of what can be done with InterDev .

I've been programming VB for roughly 6 years and I'm currently 15, so please excuse if the questions are too newbiefied .

 

[mithrilhall]

Interdev is not a language, it's a development application for creating Active Sever Pages (asp). While coding in Interdev you have the option (I think default is set up for VBScript) to use VBScript or JScript as server-side code. I personally use VBScript server-side and JavaScript client-side.

The power of asp is in it's ability to connect to databases (As far as I know). You can read and write to them creating Dynamic websites and Web applications.

 

[MerlinB]

The samples that come with interdev are qite good, as well as ones that you can download from the microsoft web site(s).

JavaScript is (syntactically) similar to both C and Java - and is far more advanced than you may think (i.e. get a book on it). VBScript is strangly similar to JavaScript - though it is more resiliant to lazy programming (its not case sensitive). VBscript has a few more built-in functions - but is not as powerful as JavaScript (object oriented / regular expressions / command 'eval'uation).

You should then try out the DTCs (design time controls) in Interdev. The way that they use JavaScript is very interesting (look as the .ASP files in the _ScriptLibrary directory of any interdev created project).

However the first logic leap over VB is to learn where to put the code for Client-Side or Server-Side execution - and when each chunk of code is actually executed.

Try the following:

* build a few simple html pages - figure out how to link them (half decent menues can be tricky).
* try creating and using a stylesheet in your html pages. As a programmer, you may find them quite logical. Interdev has a simple (but rather basic) stylesheet editor.
* try creating an html FORM. Try working out how to use the input from the form - on the server and on the client.
* Play with dynamic-html (client-side code to change 'style' properties on mouse-over events - for example). Do this using java-script and a book!
* now try DTC's. They make some things very easy (reading and writing to a database - via the DataEnvironment - I trust your SQL is up-to-scratch!!). But the cost of this ease is that some things are somewhat harder to achieve (like dynamic-html & stylesheets against DTCs).

By the time you have finished, you will have profound knowledge of:

HTML
CSS (stylesheets)
ASP (as a concept)
dynamic-html & DOM (Document Object Model)
Server Side / Client Side division of code
JavaScript (Client Side - as most browsers support this)
JScript/VBScript (Server Side)
SQL (Structured Query Language)

And if that is not enough, or you miss VB, then you could always try:
* creating some COM objects in VB, and using them in ASP code (not AciveX, as they only work with IE browsers)
* downloading the vi6 DTC toolkit and creating your own DTCs using VB and JScript.

Why bother with DTC's? Take a look at .Net and you will see the idea of DTCs brought to their very useful conclusion.

http://www.websitedesign.co.uk

http://www.zentext.com

(Content Management)