Posts tagged Visual Basic

EzRegAPI OCX Control

2 years ago

by Antonio Ramirez in Tools, Visual Basic

Here is another Activex Control I have created on the old times of Visual Basic. This time, it easiest the tasks of a programmer to use the registry API functions of Windows.

Visual Basic was one of my preferred languages when I started programming, everybody thought that it was a very slow programming language and, even more, it was not a true programming language. My love for this pseudo-language was so strong that I decided to prove to everybody that, with a bit of tweaking here and there and making use of the DLL libraries, I could speed up the application 10 times more.

And that happened, nevertheless, API programming was not easy to do and if you failed to ‘translate’ the variable types of the function called to that of Visual Basic, you could probably end up with a ‘crash’ or ‘out of memory’ error.

This is why I created these ActiveX Controls, so to help others providing a simpler and already translated code to make use of the API functions without worrying about a crash of their programs.

This is what I wrote back then (remember, I was a new born programmer -script kid)

Well, most of the people I know studying our so-loved Visual Basic language find really hard to learn and very time-consuming the way to implement the power of API functions into VB programs. Even for the most simple thing is a time-consuming operation: find and insert necessary functions, constants, and then know exactly the steps to do in order to use the functions appropriately. It is true that VB6 environment provides some templates and that you can create your own to do the job, but sometimes those templates have to be re-shaped to suit the needs of a new project.
That’s why I have started a series of ActiveX controls that will help not only beginners but to all those lazy programmers that, like me, doesn’t like to spend too much time doing research/re-shape and just want to design and code like maniacs.

How to use

The download zip package has a well written help file. You will find everything you need in it.

Download

download: EzRegAPI OCX Control (203.05KB)
added: 12/01/2010
clicks: 730

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EzCryptoApi OCX Control

2 years ago

by Antonio Ramirez in Tools, Visual Basic

Bit of History

Back in year 2001, I was working as a Visual Basic Developer. The reason why I choosed that programming language was obvious, the first book about programming landed in my hands when I was 27 years old, and the easiest programming language to learn in order to work on the field ‘fast’ was for me Visual Basic.

Everybody was talking really bad about Visual Basic, saying that it was NOT a programming language, its slow program execution rates, and so on… I thought they were wrong (somehow) and worked really hard in order to speed up every single process of Visual Basic and the only way to do it was by using external DLL libraries written in C or C++. The only challenge was that Dynamic Libraries where really hard to use, they could break at anytime the program if not well programmed, or just they didn’t do nothing at all.

This is how I started programming a set of Activex Controls that VB programmers could use and easily implement into their programs. The first control was EzCryptoAPI… and you may wonder:

What is EzCryptoAPI?

“EzCryptoApi Control makes use of two Cryptographic Service Providers: “Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider v.1″ and “Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider”. By default, Windows 9X and Windows 2000 comes with “Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider v.1″, which will allow EzCryptoApi to make use of the following encryption algorithms: RC2, RC4, and DES. EzCryptoApi will not be able to use Triple-DES or Triple-DES-112 encryption algorithms if “Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider” is not installed on the computer.”

EzCryptoAPI on the Web

This ActiveX Control has been downloaded more than 19000 times already, it was submitted to the good old www.planetsourcecode.com. They are tons of VB Programs using this little piece of code, I do not know if they still VB5 programmers around but if you are curious, make a search on GOOGLE.