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Once the Developer tab is displayed,  you can access in Word by choosing Visual Basic (or press ALT+F11). If you’ve only been a Word user up until now, the first thing you will notice in Figure below is that the VBE doesn’t resemble anything close to a document. The VBE is a very powerful development environment. 

The application window is divided into three subwindows when you first enter the VBE. On the right are the Project Explorer and Property windows. The main window is the Module window. This is where you’ll be writing the majority of your code. You can add other debugging windows to monitor variable values while you step through code. These debugging windows will be covered later.

VBE Component Basics

The Visual Basic Editor contains a number of development tools that were once found only in advanced development environments. Each of these components appears in a different window and each window may be resized, moved, or docked (double-click the left mouse button on the title bar or choose Tools|Options|Docking). If you need to view Help for an individual window within VBE, position your cursor within the window and press F1. Each of these windows is described below.

Module Window

The main window that occupies the majority of the screen is the Module window, shown in Figure 4-1. This is where you enter the VBA code that lies behind Word template or document. The Module window displays the VBA code that is associated with the selected object. If you are viewing an object, you can display the Module window by double-clicking the object. For example, add a UserForm, then double-click the UserForm to display the Module ­window (the process of double-clicking will also automatically create a subroutine for the UserForm_DoubleClick event).

Object Window and Procedure List

At the top of the Module window are two drop-down menus. The drop-down menu on the left is called the Object List. It contains a list of all objects in the active module. For instance, when the active module is a UserForm, all of the controls on the UserForm will appear in the drop-down. Finally, most modules also contain a General section. The General section is a place where general declarations can be typed. We’ll cover general declarations later, but basically these include any option statements, such as Option Explicit (to force variable declaration) or Option Compare Text (to compare text rather than ascii character values). The drop-down list on the right is the Procedure and Event List. This will contain all of the available events for the current object.

Project Explorer

In the upper-left corner is the Project Explorer window, shown in figure below. In Word, this window has a tree structure representing all open documents and templates. These documents and templates are projects as far as VBA is concerned. A project is basically a warehouse for Objects and the code behind them. You can click on any of the small plus signs to expand the branch; this will expose any of the five possible nodes: ThisDocument, UserForms, Modules, Class Modules, and References. In addition, there are two small buttons toward the top of the window that can be used to switch between viewing a form and its accompanying code.

UserForms

The UserForms branch will contain any customized UserForms attached to the document or template. The term UserForm is often used interchangeably with dialog box (generally, in the VBA vernacular, a UserForm is one that is custom created, and a dialog box is one that is built into the program). It may help to think of a UserForm as a blank object that can be turned into a dialog box through the use of controls and code. Controls facilitate certain tasks by executing the code behind the control’s events. The actual UserForm is manipulated by changing its properties or adding controls from the toolbox (Edit|Toolbox).

Modules

Modules are basically storage areas for procedures (functions and subroutines). Variables may also be declared outside of procedures in the Modules section.

Class Modules

Class modules are a specialized form of a module that allow for the creation of an object. Class modules can be used in creative ways to capture events for many intrinsic objects that are dynamically created or accessed.

References

The References section here allows for one project (usually a document) to call procedures in another project (usually the template used to create that document). You will see that references are invaluable for using Office automation. In Word, all documents will contain a reference to the template that was used to create them.

Tip:

Do not confuse a reference displayed in the Project Explorer with one that shows up in the Tools|References section. References in Word’s Project Explorer are generally other templates. References in the Tools|References section refer to the object libraries available to the project (usually DLL files).

ThisDocument

The ThisDocument section contains the properties of the actual document or template. This section operates in a very similar manner to a standard code module. If you are familiar with any of the recent Word macro viruses, you probably have seen how they use this section to propagate.

The Properties Window

The Properties window appears immediately below the Project window. See Figure 4-4. This window displays the design time properties for the object that has the focus.

Word VBA Tip: The object may have other properties that do not show in the Properties window. Several objects have properties that are only available at run time.

As a general rule, you can think of properties as the adjectives of an object. They determine an object’s characteristics. Common properties include height, width, background color, font, etc. In addition to these simple properties, all controls have advanced properties that allow greater manipulation to achieve desired results.

  Note:  Some properties may be changed only at run time and thus will not show up in the Properties window, while others are read-only and do not allow the alteration of their values.

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My only gripe (and I think this is my fault for not reading up on it yet) is that I haven’t figured out how to navigate to the most recently used commands? I might be copying files back and forth, or jumping back and forth between directories, so it’d be nice to just press the “UP” arrow to get back to those previously typed entries. I know the server allows it, but I just don’t know how to do it via ConnectBot (and it hasn’t been intuitive trying to find it). I’m going to spend some time – whenever I have it – trying to figure this one out.

It’s not going to become your “preferred way” of accessing your server, but it is an absolute MUST HAVE if you get in trouble and don’t have a laptop. I have had zero issues with it – never drops connection, screen is fine – albeit very small – it does every basic thing you’d expect it to do. Check out ConnectBot for more information. If you’re an Android Power User, this is an absolute must have.

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I think Yahoo should have a page on Facebook – where it entices users to visit compelling content on Yahoo. I don’t think fb’s discussion feature (basically non threaded comments) warrants directing traffic AWAY FROM YAHOO?

I’d be just as happy typing my 3 sentence comment in yahoo finance and returning to surfing financial info. Am I missing something here? I’m not sure I understand the strategy…

Wise Man Say, “covet the clicks you receive.”

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I was typing up a post about a recent Asus laptop purchase and planned to throw in some notes at the end. As I was typing up the notes, it hit me – Visual Studio isn’t free! (Of course not, silly me.) Here’s the thing: it’s not that it costs money, people will gladly pay money for quality – but Visual Studio is CRAZY expensive by today’s standards. I just jumped over to the Microsoft Visual Studio site and found that I could buy Ultimate for a cool $12K. (And, realistically, you WANT “Ultimate” because there is nothing worse than finding out the version you bought isn’t capable of doing something…)

.NET Development is Dying

That pricetag virtually assures us that all new innovation WILL NOT take place using Microsoft tools. Further, it won’t run on IIS which means it will won’t run on Windows (as both,  while not technically necessary for .NET development,  are intimately intertwined from a real world perspective).

Think of Facebook. The next Zuckerbug is sitting in a dorm somewhere coding away. Is he using C#/SQL Server/IIS or is he using PHP/MySQL/Apache? The answer is obvious. Microsoft will counter that they have much cheaper “student licenses.” This is further evidence that Microsoft just doesn’t get it. (Not to mention that a ”student version license” is worthless for the real world deployment that Zuckerbiscuit is contemplating.)

Small Businesses Don’t Use Visual Studio

I deal with many small businesses and deal with them intimately. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “I don’t want to be tied into Microsoft stuff,” or “Microsoft stuff is too expensive for us.” Take a look at any hosting provider. The linux options are universally cheaper – all the way from the cheapest shared hosting to dedicated servers, Microsoft is more expensive to run. The tools all cost money. SQL Server is expensive to license (not as bad as Oracle, but that is a different topic). Microsoft support is expensive.

The end result is that Microsoft is firmly entrenched in the upper crust of Worldwide business, but has virtually no support from the up and comers or the small business ranks. The only reason any average Joe has Visual Studio running on his machine is because his employer has a subscription to MSDN. Microsoft even makes it a pain for those guys to install it on their home machines now.

Google Changed The World

(But they did it a really long time ago.) And Microsoft has never figured out how to adapt. Microsoft needs desperately to gain some traction. Visual Studio is still AWESOME. You can build a killer website in a fraction of the time it takes with PHP. It’s time to give it away for free and get a couple Zuckerbifs on board before everyone catches up (and it won’t be long).

Microsoft is cash rich. They can afford to give it away. They’d get a ton of press. They’d seem young and hip again – instead of “corporate” and stodgy. The incremental revenue they’d give up would be worth it in the long run. (At least they’d have to take that chance.)

Of course, I know they won’t. First off, Balmer will never read this. Secondly, I’m sure Visual Studio has a decent bottom line. Third, there are many VP’s, many managers, and a whole slew of MS corporate people who would be appalled at the idea of giving away. There is still the, “I’d lose my job!” mentality even though we know free tools can sustain themselves. (Granted, they would probably need to completely restructure and cut a bunch of the non-creative dead wood.)

Meh, I’m tired now. Time to surf over to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I’ve been meaning to upload a sitemap over at Bing for awhile, but somehow I keep forgetting…

Wise Man Say, “Send me a Free Copy of Visual Studio.”

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It’s cheap. It’s fast enough, big enough, and has enough memory. Windows 7 runs “pleasantly” on this machine.

That’s it in a nutshell. If you’re looking for a solid laptop for the money – this is the king (8 a.m. today, 9 a.m. could be different) of the sub $500 lappys.

The processor, while sitting in dated socket 478 architecture, is much faster than either the celeron 900 (2.2 ghz) or the and v120. These seem to be the processors of choice for cheapo notebooks.

The hard drive is 320 gb, which is larger than the standard 250′s that seem a staple of < $500. Interestingly, I ran a slew of benchmarks (thanks passmark.com) against this and a decked out Lenovo I7 machine w a 500gb, 7200 rpm HD and this machine had faster sequential read and write times. They were barely better, but this laptop was demolished in virtually every other test.

You won’t be playing the latest 3D games on this laptop, but you already know that. (And you know that video games are a needless timesuck.)

I bought this as cheap “kick around” laptop as I can’t have my kids beating on my work machine, but I’d feel confident working on this box.

Developer thoughts: in the “old days,” the first thing I would do is install visual studio, the latest dotnet framework (didn’t even care enough to spell it the way Microsoft wants me to) and the latest version of office. I installed office 2007, Java SDK, android SDK, and some PHP utilities.

I informally queried some other development guys I know: not one had any version of vs on their primary “home” boxes and only one had office – 2000…

Wiseman say, “short MSFT.”

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Quick Explanation starting from bottom.

The “ripSlashes” function simply appends on a “/” trailing forward slash if it is missing. The recurse function relies on it.

The “nestedDir” function takes three parameters: 

1. The first parameter is a variable you define in the subroutine or function that will call the nestedDir function. It is basically a holder for the data returned by the nestedDir function.
2. The second parameter is simply the root directory you wish to recurse.
3. The third parameter is the file extension you wish to grab.

Finally, I’ve got a small subroutine from an Excel Spreadsheet that simply writes out the full file paths into the first column of the spreadsheet. Hope this helps someone.

———————————

Sub getSomeFolders()
'get some data out of nested xml files and put into a spreadsheet, recursively

Dim colFiles As New Collection
Dim x As Integer
Dim vFile

nestedDir colFiles, "c:\scott\new files\", "*.xml"

For Each vFile In colFiles
   x = x + 1
   Sheet1.Cells(x, 1) = vFile 'full path to the files you are recursing
Next vFile

MsgBox "done"
End Sub

Public Function nestedDir(colFiles As Collection, sFolder As String, sFileType As String)
    Dim sTemp As String
    Dim colFolders As New Collection
    Dim vFolderName As Variant

    'Add files in sFolder matching sFileType to colFiles
    sFolder = ripSlashes(sFolder)
    sTemp = Dir(sFolder & sFileType)
    Do While sTemp <> vbNullString
        colFiles.Add sFolder & sTemp
        sTemp = Dir
    Loop

    sTemp = Dir(sFolder, vbDirectory)
    Do While sTemp <> vbNullString
        If (sTemp <> ".") And (sTemp <> "..") Then
            If (GetAttr(sFolder & sTemp) And vbDirectory) <> 0 Then
                colFolders.Add sTemp
            End If
        End If
        sTemp = Dir
    Loop

    'Call nestedDir for each subfolder in colFolders
    For Each vFolderName In colFolders
        Call nestedDir(colFiles, sFolder & vFolderName, sFileType)
    Next vFolderName

End Function

Public Function ripSlashes(sFolder As String) As String
    If Len(sFolder) > 0 Then
        If Right(sFolder, 1) = "\" Then
            ripSlashes = sFolder
        Else
            ripSlashes = sFolder & "\"
        End If
    End If
End Function

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2. FTP all the files up to your 1and1 hosting directory. I went with version 1.7.3 available at http://elgg.org/download.php.

3. Create a 1and1 database for your Elgg installation.

4. Write down all your database information: username, password, database name, and host name.

5. Create your “Data” directory outside of your Elgg installation directory and open up the permissions on it. If you SSH into your hosting environment, you can CHMOD 0777 the data directory. If you FTP to your site via Windows, just right click on the folder and set the permissions.

6. Manually edit the “engine/settings.php” file. I think the wizard will now walk you through these settings, but I like doing this the old fashioned way. This is where you tell Elgg how to connect to your database. Enter your credentials from step 4 above. Make sure you don’t leave the brackets “{}” in there. (Seems like there were multiple brackets which might lead one to believe they should only remove one set.)

7. Set up your .htaccess file (VERY IMPORTANT). It seems like this is where most people blow it. It’s just an htaccess file. It can’t hurt you. Remember that you are setting it up in relation to where you’re installing it and not your root directory. For instance, I have it set to “/elgg/” and not “/hobbub/elgg/” as I have it sitting in a subdirectory of this site.

8. Okay, you should now be ready to set up your site. Try navigating to you site via the browser of your choice. If you did everything correctly, you should see a page like the image below. You’re still not done. The installer makes a best attempt to figure out your settings, but it is still up to you to verify them. In particular, my “site url” was wrong and had to be edited. The “full path to the location where files will be uploaded….” is really looking for the path to the  ”data directory” you set up in #5 above. I just copy-pasted from the textbox above and edited the last directory.

Note about Elgg Email on 1and1 servers: the Elgg registration process sends a “verify your account” email. These emails seem to get spam filtered (no matter how I changed the content) when coming from an address attached to my domain like *registration@hobbub.com* – but an address like “hobbub@hotmail.com” (sent from same server) made it through all the spam filters. This is anecdotal – no real research – perhaps subject of a future post…

9. Set up your admin account and you are done!

10. “I did everything you said and it didn’t work!” Troubleshooting is what makes this kind of stuff fun, right?

Did everything get FTP’d to your site? When I sent the zip file via command line and unzipped via SSH I had no issues. When using the Windows drag files and drop em FTP method I timed out and had to re-upload. Just for kicks, it failed when it was trying to copy the “language” directory. I hit the site to see what would happen and got the following error:

“Everything transferred, but it still doesn’t work!” I’m willing to bet at about 9-1 odds that it is your htaccess file and mod rewrite. If you can hit the install.php file but you’re getting 404 errors when you try to continue, or you’re getting 404 errors in general, it is probably due to Mod Rewrite. (The install.php sits in the root and doesn’t rely on Mod Rewrite.)

Final Note: Beware of the “Action” gotcha. When troubleshooting an ELGG install, first timers almost invariably stumble on this – and it’s natural. “The thought process is: I’m getting a 404, so the page doesn’t exist, what is the url?” You then see in your browser that it is attempting to navigate to “yoursite/action” or “/elgg/action/blahblah”. You then look at the Elgg directory structure and notice that there isn’t an “action” directory, but there is an “ACTIONS” directory. You then curse the Elgg developers as idiots and wonder how there could be such a silly error in a release.

STOP. It’s supposed to be that way. It’s your Mod Rewrite that’s bad. These Elgg guys must have a great sense of humor. The internet is littered with people who’ve stumbled onto this “revelation” and given up. If anything, it keeps competing sites down. Check your htaccess file. It’s okay? Check it again. Good luck.

Wise Man Say, “Change One Thing at a Time to Troubleshoot.”

Oh yeah, the site is at http://www.hobbub.com/elgg/ – feel free to check it out if you want to see what a base install looks like. I don’t even mind if you get yourself a couple backlinks, just don’t spam it up too much. Make It funny.

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Each of them voluntarily ‘deflated’ their wages. While their ostensible reason is to chase a championship, you can’t help but think that part of the unconscious decision is a recognition that they don’t need the same income to purchase the same levels of goods and services.

The price of a gallon of milk hasn’t changed, but the largest consumer asset – a home – is still decreasing even with rates at all time lows.

We also know that for the first time in a long time C-level compensation is down in both public and private companies. Now ask yourself who essentially drives wage and purchasing decisions across the organization? They are also accustomed to a lifestyle that is (x)% better than others. While they would never openly acknowledge this motivator on an individual level, you can’t help but think they will strive to keep that ratio the same – thereby driving costs and wages down across the entire economy.

The money supply is also shrinking. Banks are reluctant to lend. Consumers have recognized the long overdue reality that debt is not a good thing. We’re settling debt for pennies on he dollar.

Finally, it seems (and I’ve looked at an admittedly small sample) that any increase is earnings lately is due to expense reduction rather than actually making more money.

All of our economic thrust is being driven by artificial means – government stimulus. It seems that there are a lot of downward pressures on our economy

Wise man say, “am I wrong or am I wrong?”

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