The Visual Studio 2005 Express Tutorial
Version 2 of this beginner's tutorial is in progress!
About.Com provides a lot of statistics that help me understand what people out there really are looking at. One of the things that I see is that the tutorials for beginners are really popular. One of the best tutorials at About Visual Basic is the Visual Basic .NET 2005 Express - A "From the Ground Up" Tutorial.
I've changed my mind about a number of things since I originally wrote it about a year ago so I'm starting over and creating a completely rewritten version. Part 1 is on the site today.
(One caution ... I'm just one guy and I can't do these things instantly. The rest of it is still as it was a year ago. But it is all there! If you decide to move ahead with the rest of it, let me know what you like and dislike so I can do a better job of rewriting it!)
A word about tutorials at About Visual Basic
There are two main ways that I can create a tutorial at About Visual Basic. One way is to create a series of "Lessons" and a set of email invitations to go along with them. You can then "sign up" for the tutorial in much the same way that you can sign up for the site newsletter. After that, you will receive one email a week reminding you of the web address of the next Lesson in the tutorial.
Or (and consider this a hint) you can just use the "Missing Lesson" link at the bottom of the first one and get them all at once. (I don't mind. The "weekly lesson" format isn't my idea in the first place.)
There are four of these on the site and you can sign up for them at the newsletter sign up page.
(Fair warning: The oldest ones are starting to show the age of the technology they cover.)
The second way I can do it is to simply create a series of articles with a central theme and then embed links to the other articles in each of them. If you happen to find one out of sequence by, for example, following a link in a web search to one of them, then you will know what you're reading and you can make your own choices about what to do next.
I've used this second method with the more recent tutorials. I have concluded that the "weekly email" approach just isn't flexible enough for most of you. I think that most readers would rather be more in control of what you spend your time on.
There are two tutorials that use this second format:
The Visual Studio 2005 Express Tutorial
And my latest ten part series on GDI+:
GDI+ Graphics in Visual Basic 2005 .NET
But I have to admit that I have very little basis for my decisions about this, so I'm interested in what you think.
What method do you think I should use?
Is there something I can do that will make tutorials more useful to you?
(Keep in mind that it might not be possible to follow every suggestion. I have to fit my tutorials into a format required by About.Com.)
Leave a comment and let me know!
Comments
Hi i like it just the way it is now. Thanks for the gdi tuts i’m just beginning vb and the tutorials are easy to understand.
The second way is BY FAR more practical if you have to choose. People are busy, and they might need tutorials on specific topics to ‘fill in the gaps’. The chances of needing a specific tutorial exactly when the email arrives (and in that order) has a slim chance of hitting the target. Remember, your tutorials are useful even for non-newbies. Restricting tutorials is very archaic – I don’t think the world works in that linear fashion any longer.
The good news is, that it doesn’t HAVE to be either/or. There’s nothing stopping you from sending email “reminders” that the “next lesson” could be looked at. …And your advertising dollars will still be the same without frustrating the user by locking them in to a pattern. So everybody wins.
just my $0.02
Cheers,
David
I agree with David 100% for me I got more out of the GDI+ tutorial than having to wait a week for the next one.
On a second note, is it possible to that the tutorials can consist of building an application that each tutorial will cover part of its creation?
Thanks
Ray
Second way is the way.
It is important to include from the start a description of Vb.*’s structural organization and logic ,if it has any.The use of controls on pretty forms is incidental only.
Cheers
HarryE
David —
Sorry, but it does have to be “either/or”. I have no access to the email list. I can respond to you if you send me an email directly, but I can’t just send out an email broadcast. Only the head office can do that.
(I can put a note in the weekly email newsletter and I have been doing that.)
Ray –
Building a complete application…. hmmmmm …. Maybe …
The problem would be that a lot of people find my articles as a result of web searches and would therefore just get an incomplete part of this application. That’s not a problem if a complete application is built as part of a book (like the “Start to Finish” book I reviewed a few days ago) because the whole book is there and it’s impossible for one chapter to exist by itself.
I don’tlike to read about computer history, logic, background, etc. The single lines of code are not much help either. Complete modules of code for a particular event would be much better.