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  Prototyping With Visual Basic: Related Articles  
 
Overview Table of Contents Related Articles
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The following sections describe four articles I wrote for InformIT to promote this book.


Tales from the Trenches

Prototyping with Visual Basic describes a bunch of my prototyping experiences to illustrate key points. This article contains some of the funniest, rewritten slightly so they make sense out of the context of the book.


Making a Splash

First impressions can make or break a prototyping effort. This article shows how to quickly and easily make an interesting splash screen that:

  • Displays cut out text
  • Displays outlined text
  • Can act as an About dialog
  • Provides a link to a Web page

Query By Example

This article shows how you can build an instant query-by-example form so users can easily compose queries in your prototype. In many applications I have built, the users liked this type of form so much that it became part of the final application design and we didn't need to build query capabilities from scratch.


Reasons to Prototype in Visual Basic

This article is an excerpt from the book. It explains the reasons why you might need to build a prototype.

A prototype is a miniature version of the final application to be created. By building a prototype, you can better define an application's features, narrow the customer's needs, test untried technology, and refine the development team's skills. Even more important, building a smaller version of the program enables you to learn about the larger application in a shorter amount of time-and to make mistakes in miniature that are more easily fixed at this point.

Not all applications need a prototype. If you are building a quick-and-dirty file sorter that you expect to take 2 hours to build, it probably won't bankrupt you if it actually takes 3 hours. On the other hand, if you are working on an application that will take 20 programmers 3 years to build, a prototype can save you millions.

If you're not sure whether you need prototypes, read this article and learn what they're good for.

 

 
  Prototyping With Visual Basic: Related Articles  
 
Overview Table of Contents Related Articles
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk
 
 
 

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