Hannes DuPreez

Introduction Databases seem to be mysteriously strange creatures for many young aspiring programmers. Some programmers know about them, but haven’t worked with them physically. A legendary creature called the Loch-Ness Monster, or even Big Foot comes to mind here. Everyone thinks poor old Nessie and Big Foot are terrible and something to be scared of; […]

Introduction Container controls are a misunderstood concept for many a new programmer. It is as if newbies do not realize the true power of a container control. Today I will set this record straight with this article and explain exactly what Container controls are, which Container controls are available, and how to use them What […]

Introduction Validating user input can be quite a pain, especially if you do not know what techniques and what namespaces are at your disposal. Because everyone has a different way of doing things, my methods might not be 100% the same as your methods. This is why I decided to make use of Regular Expressions […]

Introduction The inner-workings of a ListView can be somewhat complicated to grasp for an inexperienced programmer. The truth is, it is just a complicated control to fathom. All is not lost though, because once you know what makes a ListView tick, there is literally no project that you can think of not needing a Listview. […]

Introduction The Treeview control gave me nightmares when I started programming many aeons ago. For some reason I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I had a similar experience with the ListView, but I’ll talk about that next time. Today I will demonstrate how to use the Treeview and how easy it actually is to […]

Introduction Working with Dates can get pretty frustrating sometimes, especially if you are a new or inexperienced developer. One particular mistake new developers make is that they do not realize that Time is also in fact a date – they find it hard to fathom. If you are very new to programming, the .NET Framework […]

Introduction The term ‘Strings‘ always seem to amount to some sort of headache among new programmers. We all know what a string is: It is any set of alphanumeric input. The trick comes in to manipulate strings properly. Once you have learned this skill, you’re halfway to  becoming a great programmer! What String Functions are […]

Introduction I am very curious. It is both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes however, like today it is a big surprise. When getting the idea for this article, I thought it would be a lot of work. Technically, it can be, but with the use of Windows Method Instrumentation (WMI ), it shouldn’t be, […]

Introduction The Windows 8 infrastructure is quite different than any earlier Windows version. This makes doing ordinary tasks quite cumbersome as: 1) you have to learn an entire different way of doing things, and 2) you have different tools at your disposal. By tools I mean classes in the Windows 8.x API. What we will […]

Introduction This has to be my favorite feature in Windows 8.x. OK, I’ve probably said that many a time. With so many developers wondering why exactly there were five-thousand plus new APIs introduced in Windows 8.x, it is hard to resist the temptation of looking into them. The Geolocation API allows us to find our […]

Introduction For those that have followed my articles lately, you will have noticed that I like to show you things based on my experience. I also always try to help similar developers out there that come from a desktop app programming background. This article is no exception. With this article I will show you the […]

Introduction Today I will talk about the exciting new features to expect in Windows 8.1 and VS 2013 specific to the Windows Store. New Features in Windows 8.1 and VS 2013 Automatic App Updates Bing Analytics Redeemable Credit Proxy authentication for enterprise scenarios Automatic App Updates You can let users automatically update their apps with […]