Purpose

The purpose of this tutorial is to help learn a few more NS Basic/Desktop programming techniques. You should complete Tutorial #1 before beginning this tutorial. In this tutorial, the techniques of using multiple forms will be covered.

Description of the Program

The program to be developed has two forms. Form #1 allows the user to enter a birthdate and name. Form #2 shows the values of the previously entered birthdate and name plus it tells on what day of the week the birthdate occurred.

Program Development

1. Startup

• Start NS Basic/Desktop Desktop IDE from the Start menu.
• At the initial screen select Standard Project

2. Modify the First Form's Parameters

• You should now see a blank form with the title "Form1"
• Select the form in the Project Explorer by clicking on it.
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to  "MyForm1"

3. Create objects for Form 1

• Click on the Date object in the Toolbox.
• Move the cursor to the form where you want the object to appear and click the left mouse button.
• Click on the object to select it.
• Set the Name to "dateBirth3"

Add a TextBox to enter the user's name:

• Click on the TextBox object in the Toolbox (looks like "ab")
• Click the left mouse button to place the TextBox object on the form
• Click on the object to select it.
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to "textName1"
• In the Properties Window. enter "Enter Your Name" as the Text.

Add a CommandButton to transfer to Form 2

• Select the CommandButton object in the Toolbox.
• Place it on the form and click on it to select it.
• In the Properties Window. enter "Show the Day of the Week" as the Caption.

4. Create the Second Form

• Select "Project" from the top main menu
• Select "Add Form" from the menu
• In the Properties Window, set the Name to "MyForm2"

5. Create objects for Form 2

Add a Label before the birthday textbox:

• Select the Label ("A") object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and click on it to select..
• In the Properties Window, enter "Birthday =" as the caption.

Add a TextBox where the birthday will be shown:

• Select the TextBox object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to "textDate2"

Add a Label before the name :

• Select the label object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, enter "Name =" as the caption

Add a TextBox where the name will be shown:

• Select the TextBox object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the name to "textName2"

Add a Label before the day-of-the-week:

• Select the label object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Windows, enter "Day-of-week =" as the Label

Add a TextBox where the day-of-week will be shown:

• Select the TextBox object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the name to "textDayName"

Add a button to allow transfer back to form # 1:

• Select the CommandButton object from the Toolbox
• Place it on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, enter "Go Back" as the Caption

6. Code to transfer to Form 2

When the user taps on the "Show the Day of the Week" button, we want Form 2 to appear.

• Go back to Form 1 by double clicking on MyForm1 in the Project Explorer.
• Double click on the "Show Day of Week" button to bring up its Code Window.
• Enter these lines of code after the SUB line:

	MyForm1_Hide
	MyForm2_Show

• Close the code window.

This code hides the objects on Form 1 and displays the objects on Form 2.

7. Provide Code for Form 2 Objects

• Double click on MyForm2 in the Project Explorer to go to Form 2.

Supply code to be executed after the form is drawn

• Double click any part of the form which doesn't have an object underneath to open the code window.
• Enter these lines of code after the SUB MyForm2_2_Load line

	textName2.text = textName1.text
	textDate2.text = dateBirth3.text
	textDayName.text = WeekDayName(WeekDay(textDate2.text))

• Close the Code Window.

This code fills in form's TextBoxes with values before the device displays the form to the user.

• It sets the TextBox on the form that contains the user's name to the value from the textbox on Form 1.
• It sets the TextBox on the form which contains the birthday to the value from date picker on Form 1. This is the value entered on Form 1 by the user using the date popup routine.
• It sets the TextBox on the form that contains the Day-of-week. It does this by using the function WeekDay to create a number from 1 to 7, passing the value to the function WeekDayName to get the string representation of the day of week, and supplying it as input the birthday in MyDate.

8. Supply code for the Go Back button to go back to Form 1

• Double click on the button to bring up the Code Window
• Enter this code after the SUB line

	MyForm2_Hide
	MyForm1_Show

• Close the Code Window.

When this button is selected, the program will just cause Form 1 to re-appear and the user can try another date.

• Save the Project

Save the project as Tutorial2 in a directory you like.  All form definitions, form objects, all code, and other project info are saved into the one project file.

12. Generate and test the executable file

• Select Start from the Run menu.

If you have any errors, an error message will appear and the code window will appear with the section of code where the error occurred highlighted. Errors must be corrected and run repeated until there are no more errors.

Congratulations !! You have now written your second NS Basic/Desktop program.