An Indepth Look At The Winsock Control (part Iii) Part III - The Coding Begins

[ghostrider 0]

An Indepth Look At The Winsock Control

Part III - The Coding Begins

 

Stuff That Is Covered in Part III:

If you haven't read my first two parts to this tutorial, you should go here first and read them. During this part we start some basic coding of our chat program. There isn't much code relating to the Winsock control yet, but we need to set up the basic stuff before we begin. There will be a LOT of Winsock code next tutorial, I promise.

 

Starting off:

First, you should open up VB6. Create a new 'Standard EXE'. Here's what my screen looks like at this point. Click to enlarge the photo.

 

 

Lets start out by making the form look nice. The color scheme is based off of my site. Rename your form to frmStart. Set the BackColor to Black. Be sure that when you set the BackColor that Palette is selected and NOT System. System colors can vary between systems, so to make sure that the colors say the same between computers, use the Palette. This is true for any other coloring changing you do in VB. Change these properties.

 

Name frmStart

BackColor Black

BorderStyle 1 - Fixed Single

Caption EasyChat v1.0 - Login

Height 4620

ScaleMode 3 - Pixel

StartUpPosition 3 - CenterScreen

Width 8250

 

Add some controls:

Add a label somewhere on your form. It doesnt matter what size it is, the properties you enter will put it in its proper place and its proper size.

 

Name Label1

BackColor Black

Caption EasyChat v1.0

Font BankGothic Md BT, Bold, 28 (you need to open up the font dialog)

ForeColor &H0015FF15& (you need to type this in, its not on the Palette)

Height 81

Left 72

Top 8

Width 401

 

Below is a pic of what it should look like:

 

Add the two options:

Again, you can place these anywhere on the screen. The properties will put them where they are supposed to be.

 

Name Option1

BackColor Black

Caption Start a chat room

Font Verdana, Regular, 10

Height 17

Left 64

Top 64

Value True (marks this option on the screen)

Width 201

 

Name Option2

BackColor Black

Caption Join a char room.

Font Verdana, Regular, 10

Height 17

Left 64

Top 80

Width 201

 

Here is a picture of while I was setting all of the properties for the two Option controls.

 

Here is another pic:

 

Add the Winsock control:

Add the Winsock control to your form. Don't change its name. You can place the control anywhere you want on the form, it is invisible during run-time. I placed mine right next to the EachChat v1.0 label.

 

Add some more important controls:

We need to add just a few more controls before we start writing some code.

 

Name Label2

BackColor Black

Caption "" (make sure Caption has nothing in it.)

Font Verdana, Regular, 10

ForeColor Blue (select the darkest one)

Height 17

Left 32

Top 136

Width 137

 

Name Label3

BackColor Black

Caption ""

Font Verdana, Regular, 10

ForeColor Blue

Height 17

Left 32

Top 136

Visible False

Width 137

 

Name Text1

Font Verdana, Regualr, 10

Height 19

Left 176

Text ""

Top 136

Visible False

Width 113

 

Name Label4

BackColor Black

Caption CLICK HERE TO START

Font BankGothic Md BT, Bold, 36

ForeColor Yellow (pick the brightest one in the palette)

Height 89

Left 72

Top 176

Width 401

 

Finally some code:

We are now ALL DONE with all the properties. Here is what it should look like completed:

 

Double click your form and get ready to add some code:

 

Place this code in Form_Load():

'Lets start out with filling in Label2Label2.Caption = "Your IP Address is:  " & Winsock1.LocalIP'This puts the IP address of your computer in the label.

Put this code in Option1_Click():

'We don't need to enter an IP address when we are the server.'Make that part of the form invisible.Label2.Visible = TrueLabel3.Visible = FalseText1.Visible = False

Put this code in Option2_Click():

'We don't need to know our IP address when we are connecting'to someone else.  Make that invisible.Label2.Visible = FalseLabel3.Visible = TrueText1.Visible = True

You can download a ZIP file of all the files needed for the project so far. If its not uploaded yet, I'm making the zip file as we speak. The Part IV is coming soon; we will be writing a lot more Winsock related code.
Edited November 25, 2006 by ghostrider (see edit history)