Jonathan Wood's SoftCircuits Programming provides Visual Basic and C++ consulting services. SoftCircuits' web site at http://www.softcircuits.com has lots of example programs and free utilities that can be a boon to programmers.  A brand-new offering on his site is Cygnus 2.0, a very powerful and inexpensive hex file editor.  In my opinion it is the fastest and easiest hex editor available anywhere! Features include MDI interface, multi-level undo & redo, extensive drag & drop support, blazing fast and flexible search, search and replace, file compare, delete and insert characters as easily as you can in a word processor, edit files up to available virtual memory (up to 2GB), much more.  Check it out the "try before you buy" version using this link.

  Franson offers a range of software products for Desktop and Pocket PC development, including Virtual Serial Port and GPS support.  Click  the Franson SerialTools image for more information on the software available and approaches to their use in your software programs.

Click Ucalc above for more information.

An expression parser for programmers Let's say you're writing an application, and instead of hard-coding a pre-determined set of formulas, you want to let your users add their own, whenever they want. You started developing a math engine in-house, but gave up after several months. You found some solutions on the Internet. But now, you're looking for something that's faster, more flexible, and more reliable. You want something that will save your company development time and money. What you need then is uCalc Free Math Parser. Product Description uCalc Free Math Parser allows programs to evaluate math expressions that are defined at run time.  Ease of implementation, flexibility, sturdiness and speed are at the core of the product's design.  It includes direct support for Borland C++ Builder, Delphi, PowerBASIC (PB/DLL and PB/CC), Visual Basic (classic), Visual Basic .NET, and Visual C++. uCalc FMP in a nutshell Example 1: This lets the end-user evaluate an expression such as 6+4*5/2 UserExpr$ = InputBox$("Enter an expression",,"6+4*5/2") Print ucEval(UserExpr$)   ' Returns 16 Example 2: This user expression is very rapidly evaluated in a loop (See the demo that comes with the download for a more complete example) UserExpr$ = InputBox$("Enter an expression",,"x^2+x+1") xPtr = ucDefineVariable("x As Double", VarPtr(x)) ExprPtr = ucParse(UserExpr$)    For x = 1 To 1000000    SumTotal = SumTotal + ucEvaluate(ExprPtr) Next It's FREE Under the free license, you may include the DLLs in commercial, educational, personal, or private projects, on as many computers as needed, whether on individual or networked systems.  There is no royalty fee.  The Free License help file topic gives you the code to remove the message box that pops up in demo mode.  Although the free license does not entitle you to technical support, chances are fairly good that you might get a response if you post your technical support questions online.  Only a few advanced features (none of which were available in 2.0) are reserved for the commercial license, and there is a generous limit on the number of items you can define.

VBnet, the Visual Basic Developers Resource Centre, http://www.mvps.org/vbnet provides code samples, FAQ, and useful advice. Many of the examples have been written by Randy Birch, but some may specify additional authors or contributors.

The Developer MVP (Most Valuable Professional) web site is devoted to information and sample code submitted by various MVPs. Microsoft is not associated with this site. Go to http://www.mvps.org/vb for Karl Peterson's Visual Basic contributions to the MVP site.

vbAccelerator.com is a site devoted to providing free, advanced source code to Visual Basic programmers since June 1998. Now it includes the .NET and C# community.

MultiLinker is a really powerful tool.  Read this description, and click the link to get more information, or to download your own copy.

MultiLinker is an add-in for Word that allows you to do the following
• Automate the process of adding hyperlinks to Word documents
• Convert Word documents to PDF files with the hyperlinks still operating
• Convert Word documents to HTML files, with the hyperlinks still operating
• Convert Word Documents to HTML Help files, with the hyperlinks still operating
What exactly does MultiLinker do?
• MultiLinker automatically looks up cross-references within Word documents according to rules which you can configure, and converts the cross-references into hyperlinks.
• MultiLinker looks through Word documents for URLs and automatically converts any it finds into hyperlinks
• MultiLinker automatically creates hyperlinks between Word documents according to rules which you can configure. Links can to be the start of a document or to any defined point within the document (useful if you have a glossary in a separate file with lots of definitions and abbreviations which you want to link to).
• MultiLinker checks through a batch of documents to search for broken hyperlinks, and reports and/or highlights any broken links found
• MultiLinker converts Word documents to PDF format complete with hyperlinks and other navigation features, with the assistance of Acrobat Distiller (version 4 or later) or Ghostscript. It adds bookmarks (outline entries), and makes links from hyperlinks, REF and PAGEREF fields, and the page numbers of an INDEX field. When converting, links between documents within a set are updated so that they point to the converted PDF file.
• MultiLinker converts Word documents to HTML Help format. Each heading and its associated text is converted to a topic of the HTML Help file. The links within the document between topics remain functional, and any index entries inserted into the Word doc as XE fields are automatically added to the index of the CHM file. A header file is provided which assigns a context ID to each page, so it is simple to open individual pages as Help topics for forms & controls in VB or VBA applications.
• MultiLinker converts Word documents to HTML format, with options for stripping roundtrip information from the HTML file to make it smaller. When converting, links between documents within a set are updated so that they point to the converted HTML file.
• MultiLinker operates in batch mode, able to perform any or all of its tasks on some or all of the files in a folder (including recursively being able to check all the files in a folder hierarchy). Inserting Hyperlinks:  Suppose you have a technical document, with lots of defined terms and abbreviations, and you want to make it easier for the reader to look them up. MultiLinker allows you to mark the defined terms, and then will search through the document for each term, and convert each example of it into a hyperlink
whose destination is the point you have marked.  MultiLinker can also automate the process of adding links between documents, so that you can have a set or related documents all linked together.

SnagIt Screen Capture and Sharing All the screen capture and editing functionality you’ll ever need, in one simple and powerful program Is my choice for Image Capture for documentation and webpage construction.  SnagIt is a utility program that I would not be without.  Not only does it make my job easier, it allows me to do a better job!  Click the image above or go to the Techsmith website to learn more, and to download a working demo version.  While you are there, take a look a Camtasia Studio Presentation.  Using SnagIt, you can select and capture anything on your screen, then easily add text, arrows, or effects, and save the capture to a file or share it immediately by e-mail or IM.  Capture and share an article, image, or Web page directly from your screen. Or, capture and share any part of any application that runs on your PC.  The version that I am using is Snagit 9, and frequent updates that add new features are terrific, and free!  I've never seen a bug, so these updates, AFAIK, address making the product better, not fixing problems. What You Can Do With SnagIt Share Exactly What You See on Your Screen Combining images with text is a much more powerful way to communicate than using text alone. This is why SnagIt captures are such an effective way to get your point across. Capture exactly what you see on your screen – an image, an article, or part of a Web page. Then, email it right from SnagIt to a colleague, technical support, or even your best friend.   Give Your Presentations More Visual Impact With SnagIt, you can easily add company logos or other branding elements to your PowerPoint presentations to give them a custom, professional look.  You can even add short video clips of onscreen activity to training presentations. Instruct Others With Quick "How-To" Illustrations Using SnagIt, you can capture any button, menu, icon, window, or other part of any application that can run on your PC.  Then, use arrows, captions, stamps, cursors or text callouts to illustrate the steps you want the reader to follow or concepts you want them to grasp. Capture and Edit Capture Anything With SnagIt, capturing anything on your screen is a few simple clicks away.  At the same time, SnagIt is powerful enough to handle all of your custom capture needs. Edit and Add Effects With SnagIt’s powerful Editor at your fingertips, there’s no need to open another application to add the finishing touches to your captures.

MZ-Tools allows you to write code, find code, design your forms, document your applications, and review their quality much faster than you do it today. It saves you time every time you use it.

It is an add-in to the several Microsoft programming environments such as Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET (VB.NET, C#, Visual J# and C++ languages), VB6, VB5 and VBA.  Click the image for more details. 

This is a product that I use and recommend.

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B & B Electronics Manufacturing Company sells hundreds of serial communications products. These range from short-range modems and serial converters, to cables, adapters, and debugging aids. See their online catalog for a complete list.  European inquiries should be directed to www.bb-europe.com.