Projects in Progress or Planned

The following are some of the projects I currently have in progress or planned for the future. Some of these will be released as freeware, some as shareware, and others will be released as purchase only projects and then one of them I just haven't decided, which is one of the things holding that project back. As you can see I have a number of projects and as these are all done in my spare time I cannot give realease dates but if anyone is interested in any of these and would like more info please contact me .

Dazzling Project Explorer v2

This one is actually very close to complete but unfortunately as mentioned I am moving to the UK in about a month and a half so I doubt I will have this finished in time. My goal with this version is to replace the Standard Project Explorer completely.

I will destribute this as source code for and will include all previous versions in the zip file. The improvements I have made are:

• Full integration into the VB IDE.
• PopUp menu's from the VB IDE, so that you can add remove items etc. from DPE instead of having to use the built-in PE.
• Full Help documentation (Help source also supplied). I have decided to use this project and it's help file to show others how to write a really proffesional looking help file for their application.
• The ability to copy or move procedures, controls, or entire components (modules, forms, etc) from one location to another.

WriteURowN

This application is a Test writter and devlivery application. It started out as a tutorial for someone who wanted to know how to do something. The application was started a long time ago and completed and then I discovered a bug that limited the size of file it could work with so it was rewritten to resolve this. I then decided to produce a test delivery interface for the application and it was during this that I realised the full potential of this application for educational institutions. The final design I have settled on is a test writter and configurator which will allow an instructor to create test question and then use this database of questions to build tests. It will then have a seperate test delivery interface. The delivery interface will modelled on the Prometric and Transcender style.

The only problems I am still grappling with are how I should develop the application. Should I go for a Web Service, IIS application, Standard executable, or Distributed Application, each has it's pro's and con's and I haven't quiete decided how to market the app and other related details so.... Once I have decided on this I will begin the development process. Ideally I would like to target this at either non-profit educational institutions etc, or as a profitable application targeting educational institutions etc, or just take the finished thing and sell it complete to an organisation such as Transcender or one of the many other Test simulation or educational organisations.

This will be a truly wicked and powerful application when completed.

Dazzling Buying 'n' Pricing System

Well This is my real baby. This when complete will be a complete system with Stock Control, Purchasing, Price comparisons, Purchase prompting and many other features. I got the idea from a misdesigned application that was developed for a company I know. The application had a fancy interface that some users found difficult to use as it was not intuitive and was error prone if you did not do things the Right way. It also lacked support for muliple suppliers per product and gave no means of comparing profit margins etc from various suppliers or between different branches. Initially this application would be targeted at supermarket type companies and then expand into other areas. I also want to provide Bar code scanning as a means of stock control. I have a friend who has written an absolutely awesome product configurator for dynamic and semi static bill of materials for the manufacturing industry and would like my application to be able to plug into his application. I have no intention at this stage of writting an accounting module for this application but would rather write information to database tables or files for an accountng application to use. At most all that would be required to integrate the application with any finacial package would be to write an intermediate application to transfer the information between the two applications.

I actually have a 3/4 working version of this aplication but have decided to remodel the application to support a Distributed COM+ version and a standalone version. This was not originally done as when I started this project I did it more to see how and if I could solve the problems that were present in the application that prompted me to write this one. Once I knew I could do a better job I decided that I wanted to write the application, unfortunately the company I was going to target had not yet realised the limitations of the application they currently had so since I had no market for the application I put it on the shelf doing so has also provided me with time to refine my ideas, ex[ectations, goals, design, etc.

Conversion Calculator

Pretty simple really and there are so many around. what I want to do to set mine apart is include EVERY single unit of measure known. I have the ISO conversion book and I would love to put this into a database, the problem is I don't feel like typing that much info into a database.

Dazzling Events

I am considering one small addition to the application and that is adding an clock synchronisation feature so that you can sync your system time with one of the atomic clock time servers. After that I intend to put Dazzling Events on the shelf for ever as I do not want the application to become complex and lose it's attraction as a simple easy to use yet powerful application.

XML Editor

I just want to do this so that I can have one. Essentially a Tree showing the structure of the XML document and some text boxes to edit the Tree nodes. Very simple really but so handy.

App AddIn's

This is not an application but a tutorial and exercise. I want to write an application and then write AddIn's for the application or allow others to write AddIn's so this will be my experiment to see how to do this. I knw the theory but theory is a long way from implementation so this will little App and AddIn will be my experimant. Once completed I want to then distribute it as a sample so that others can see how to do the same for there own applications.

Project Analyser

Well this is what I started on when I wrote the Dazzling Project Explorer AddIn. Except that this will be a standalone version. My goal is to produce an application that will show the structure of a VB Application graphically. There are others out there but most cost a small fortune so I want to write a cheap one.