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CodeCharge Studio Version 2.0.6.11
Review By Chris Cowlbeck
New Features Applicable to My Application
Geared for Novice to Intermediate
Users, or Hands-on Business Owners
This review
is a continuing effort on my part to improve the womb-to-tomb time it takes to create
and maintain a business model for our realty operation that integrates
databases and web delivery. My initial
review can be viewed at the following URL http://www.programmingmsaccess.com/ProductReviews/CodeCharge%20Studio%20Review.htm
and covers my point of view in using the software as well as the basics of
setting up CodeCharge Studio, the steps for which have remained the same for
version 2. I have spent the last several
months in my spare time building a more secure network and integrating
redundant broadband services for our web reliability. CodeCharge Studio code is proving to work
well both inside the isolated network and passing data and web pages through
the firewall successfully. I’ll focus on
several of the new features.
Documentation and Examples – Version 2 has improved the
documentation of the product, by including detailed steps that will bode well
for novices and intermediate users. The
screen shots are particularly helpful to those visually oriented. The example pack delivered with this version
provides a good deal of information useful in testing and trying different
solutions. In particular, I try to use
the software on an intuitive basis when possible, as a test of great
programming – when I can use it out of the box, it leaves me smiling. But facing reality, the topics automated
here are complicated and finicky. The
example pack installs as referenced in the Help section, right from the
built-in menus without any hassles at all.
An example of how I used this was trying the Directory Builder fresh on
a new page, where I promptly waded through guessing what the fields needed to
be. I went to the example pack and there
is a page with the builder correctly configured, and a description page that
walks you through the theory and implementation. Excellent!
In
addition, for those seemingly buggy little issues that pop up in every
undertaking on a computer and which are server, system or path issues not of
the software, their on-line Help is prompt and effective. Of the many models of Help I have seen, they
use a reporting vehicle over the web, which logs and emails you a support log number. A tech then suggests a fix, posts it to the
on-line database, then emails you to check the
reply. You can then the try fix, and
then post back a response on the web database about how it worked. I have been very pleased with CodeCharge
Studio Help service.
Date Picker Builder – Our business references a lot of
dates – particularly those out into the future.
For a number of years, I have been fiddling with various date entry
mechanisms for MS Access and ASP. Recent
strides include date picker components and CodeCharge Studio has included a
nice one in this version. I had
difficulty at first, but it turns out I had the path referenced as a letter
drive and not a UNC path. The CSS
styling didn’t catch (see missing icons in the screen shot immediately
below). I’ll refer you back to the
“Fatal Errors” section of my first review – I’ll bet this is the single most
problematic area for many folks. I
overlook the same error repeatedly. Once
the test project was referenced correctly, the builder worked well.
Correct
formatting deserves another mention. I
generated errors several times and kept going to the sample table I made. The date picker kept telling me the format
was incorrect and to select the correct one in settings. In addition, I could not publish the page.
“Warning:Unable to set the date
format for the "DatePicker_date1" DatePicker
component. Please specify the related control's Format property or the Date
Display Format property in the Project settings.”
The fix was
rather simple. Go to Project Settings
and set a project format for the dates.
I made sure it was the same as the database I was using. I initially added the setting “Short Date”
which should be familiar to most with some MS Access experience. The page published and I actually could
launch the date picker web page, but the date picker displayed showed the year
2020 (see screen shot above) and set the year in a truncated fashion (not
shown).
See the
mistake below. Simple stuff, but you can
pull your hair out! And time is money.
Once
configured correctly, the Date Picker allowed me to change the style at will,
and create a helpful tool for the date selections we need several months in
advance. For grins I looked at the code
and I’m happy to say, I’d pay the price of the software just to save the time
not having to bug out the code in this one feature!
Search and Replace – While I don’t do that much
changing after the fact, during the initial phases of a project, I find I
invariably am required to change the name of files and directory paths, either
from user request or as required by some necessity of the server or
network. This feature will come in quite
handy and for those accustomed to it’s use in
Microsoft products, it’s a welcome addition.
I’ve used effectively to find buggy code snippets suggested by
CodeCharge Studio support suggestions as well.
File Upload Builder – I haven’t fully decided to use
this feature, until I fully document how virus protection handles these
uploads. I have reviewed and actually
run the File Upload Builder, and the documentation is very good for this
seemingly simple activity. In my case,
I’ll be using ASP 3.0 until I’m comfortable going to ASP.NET (another reason
CodeCharge Studio is so superb – one touch code regeneration….ZERO recoding, or
very little). However, uploading in ASP
3.0 is not native and additional 3rd Party software is required or a
pure scripting solution. Help on File Uploader outlines the possible solutions, one other of
which I have been using from Dundas Software. This File Upload Bilder
is a very good addition to CodeCharge Studio.
Site Diagram – Like many persons developing web
sites for their employees, being able to provide a number of different ways for
the users to learn is invaluable. None
of us learn the same way or retain what we have seen in the same fashion. I’ll use this handy feature to map various
“parts” of the site. It is very flexible
and I can select any number of diagrams that include only the pages I need for
a particular purpose. It would be nice
if these would publish as a web page from the shortcut menus used to publish
the pages which would save me the steps of creating a screen shot and inserting
it in a web page, but this is a very small price to pay. A screen shot from the Help files is included
below to give you an idea of the outcome which is automatically generated
Index/Directory – This is probably the most useful
new feature will impact the way we manage information for our company intranet content
and public information content and be positively felt by the end users, which
is our goal. Building on the familiarity
created by the success of Yahoo directory structure, CodeCharge Studio can now
easily use database entries to create the directory (which can be edited by MS
Access interface or web interface), present the directory via web pages and
have it intuitively understood by a majority of users.
Again, Help
documents the interface, and the example pack delivers a sample database that
can be used right out of the chutes! Of
course, the styling can be selected at will and the construction of the code is
done automatically. Below are a few
screen shots of the Directory Builder results from the sample database in
design view, along with the results published to the web and the database
entries that correlate
.
Multi-Select List Box – I had no plans for multiple list
boxes under our previous company data structures, but recent updates and
changes have allowed me to consider this new feature. I had found several solutions in MS Access
but had difficulty getting the same results on our traditional web pages, and
therefore abandoned attempts to implement this capability.
The Help
section identifies the format for the code to add to the event property section
of the List Box control which is auto generated from the List Box Builder. Their inclusion of sections like this
eliminates much of the potential confusion for novice and intermediate developers
and is typical throughout the Help section.
The screen
shots below show the design and Help section.
Summary
My initial
high opinion of this product remains after reviewing the enhancements. I am still amazed how such a complicated
process can be boiled down to such simple steps and while being able to convert
to other languages in a few clicks. The
product is powerful and as simple to overcome the learning curve as many
similarly complex software packages – in fact, I have tried to learn many that
were far more complicated and covered far few overall concepts. Some may argue that the lack of native
graphic design flash would be a hold back, but the ease of editing and
commingling pages in MS FrontPage or other similar editors, overcomes this issue
for me. As a hands-on owner of several
small businesses I find that this is the product that will save me the most
time and deliver the successful results needed by our companies and demanded by
the consumers. I had previously decided
to use CodeCharge Studio to handle the heavy lifting code generating work when
I reviewed version 1, and I am firmly convinced that I should continue our
development projects with CodeCharge Studio as the admiral of the fleet.
Reviewer Biography
Chris Cowlbert is an active partner at the
ProgrammingMSAccess.com. His initial
encounter with the site was through the Access/SQL Server/FrontPage Seminar
marketed through the ProgrammingMSAccess.com site. He was one of the first three members to join
the Database Developers Group. This is
Chris’s second review – the first one was for the initial version of CodeCharge
Studio. Chris is a smart business
person, who has multiple businesses. As
you can tell from this review, he has a passion for building custom Web-based
solutions for those businesses. He is
also a loving father and husband, and a man who walks with God.