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Am I the only person that detects sarcasm in qwerty's reply?

I have to say I agree with that sarcasm, the best way to make Dialogs is with a dialog editing tool. Why? because a dialog is a visual GUI element, it only makes sense that designing it visually will produce better results. There's no advantage to designing it in mIRC, at all. You can fine tune your dialog in a dialog editor just as easily as you can in mIRC, I mean just because you align controls with a mouse doesn't mean there is any more scope for mis-alignment (if thats your quibble), The pixels where you place these elements are displayed right there in the IDE.

Watchdog, I am suprised a user of Visual Basic regards visually designing GUI elements to be inferior to typing. If that is true then what is the advantage of VB to other language's.

Making dialogs without an Visual tool is a trivial task, albeit tedious, and isn't the hallmark of an excellent scripter. Anyone can do it. Infact that's how most of started off.
The only difference is that it's more time consuming. And this isn't one of those matter of prefernce issues, anyone who spends an hour doing what could be done in 10 minutes with an Dialog editor is a fool. It's not even a creative achievement, it's not like making a picture window GUI, very little knowledge is involved in making a dialog table!

I would disagree with the idea that to be serious about scripting you have to use a dialog editor but thats no reason to swing to the other extreme of foolishness.

Maybe im over-estimating qwerty and no sarcasm was intended, but my point still stands.

If that is true then what is the advantage of VB to other language's.

Well it's the easiest and quickest way to code ASP pages for a start, and as the default server-side language for IIS, probably the most appropriate language.

Making dialogs without an Visual tool is a trivial task, albeit tedious, and isn't the hallmark of an excellent scripter. Anyone can do it. Infact that's how most of started off.

To each their own. However I cannot understand why I should be expected to use someone elses work to create my own work. Even in Microsoft Development Environment, while you can 'draw' a dialogue, you still code the functions manually in an editor.

My crack about Notepad being l337 was sarcastic. I don't consider myself to be a gun coder, I just enjoy knowing that I can do something without having to either:

1. Prove it to others for the sake of letting them know I can do it.
2. Use someone elses scripting or tool to achieve it.

The only difference is that it's more time consuming. And this isn't one of those matter of prefernce issues, anyone who spends an hour doing what could be done in 10 minutes with an Dialog editor is a fool.

I've made a dialogue with 2300 lines of scripting - it's called a channel central. Don't expect to emulate that in a dialogue maker. I would in an instant question the ability of a dialogue maker to achieve what I did manually in that respect. The feature list is simply too rich to consider anything else.

I would disagree with the idea that to be serious about scripting you have to use a dialog editor but thats no reason to swing to the other extreme of foolishness.

I didn't "swing to" anything. That is my point. I use the mIRC editor to make dialogues and won't be changing that.

Final points: Isn't it possible that a dialogue maker could still produce bugs? If so wouldn't that require some stuffing around to sort out? As for VB, well, I code that manually in Notepad because the functions I require for my website do not require the need to do the job in MS Dev.

1. VBScript (not Visual Basic) is the default language for IIS. VBScript is not visual, VB is.
2. I believe he's referring to Dialog Studio. It is not used to create the entire script, merely the dialog tdefDName { portion, or at least the start of a complex one.
   
   I like DStudio because I can quickly and visually put the controls onto the form, size and position them so they complement each other, etc. Then I can just take the resultant table definition over to mIRC and make it active to make sure everything looks good. Then the real work begins of making each of the controls do what you have designed for them to do. I don't know of a similar integrated development environment (IDE) to VB's that allows you to double-click the control to get into the code section for that control and create the appropriate event header.
   
   I don't use DStudio all the time, but I do when I care if the dialog looks visually appealing and logically laid out. For a simple table definition for a sample dialog to answer a question, I don't bother firing up DStudio. size -1 -1 300 300 will work, and you can add basic (and ugly) control dimensions for a simple example because the visual appeal is immaterial.
   
   I do use Notepad to write most of my web pages because it does the job I need it to do, without all the bells and whistles I don't need for something I know how to do. If, however, I need to manage an entire project/site conveniently, I prefer to use UltraEdit -- which is basically just a souped-up Notepad with some nifty features, most of which are non-intrusive to my standard operating procedures.
3. Again, something like DStudio is not a full IDE, just a visual table definition maker.
4. DStudio create bugs? No. You will probably still want to do some tweaking. I prefer to use my own ID numbering system (i.e., listboxes/combos are in the 100s, edits/texts are in the 200s, etc.). I frequently adjust the order of controls to modify the z-index (tab order).
   
   You do not code Visual Basic manually; as noted above, you code VBScript in Notepad (as do I).

Dialog makers merely produce the visual aspect of the dialog - the actual table layout. There is no 'feature set' which they can't replicate because it is not the job of a dialog maker to create the feature set. And for creating the table layout, a visual interface is many times faster and more intuitive than hand-typing them.

You got it right, it was sarcasm. What you said are exactly my views on the dialog creation subject. Just as Dialog Studio is a million times more practical and specialized for creating dialogs, Wordpad/Word etc are far more practical and specialized for (non-elementary) text editing. That doesn't mean I underestimate Notepad, just as I don't underestimate the mirc Editor of course: apart from dialog editing, I script solely in the mirc Editor. Also, I do 90% of my everyday text-related tasks in Notepad. But I believe that there are tools that do a specific job (or a bunch of jobs) far more efficiently. And it just doesn't feel right not to use them.

That's the thing though, if one is powering through work then a Visual tool would come in handy, it's no different to a web developer using Dreamweaver instead of Notepad. There's a big difference between me and someone that makes websites for a living though. As there is a big difference between myself, a casual (if that much) script writer these days. I only make scripts for myself at the moment and I rarely use dialogues for them as I think they are over-used and over-rated in scripts. I am still happy powering many functions with popups where appropriate.

You are right about VB and VBScript, please excuse my slight oversight there. I have a habit of calling the lot VB but that is because I am lazy. :tongue:

Perhaps the mIRC script editor and Visual dialogue makers both have their place, coding manually is just my preference though.

Well that's an odd way to look at it. It's like an artist refusing to use a Paint brush or a canvas that someone else has made, Or a builder refusing to use a hammer or drill because he didnt make it himself. In the end, the tools you use aren't as important as the quality of the finished work. In the extra time wasted by hand coding dialog tables, you could be improving other features / eliminating bugs.

Unless ofcourse you actually enjoy making dialog tables by hand, but the reason you gave was that you don't like using someone else's work (dialog editor).

It's not really, as indicated above the dialogue editors don't add the functionality, just the dialogue itself. If I was to make my channel central again the dialogue editor would do about 10% of the required work as the other 90% is the 'functionality', not the dialogue itself. I'm just saying that in my case it's not worth the effort. Making the dialogue itself is the easiest part.



It's all a matter of personal preference but I think this is well laid out. Making this visually wouldn't, in my view, do a better job. Quicker maybe, better probably not.

No, probably not better, but what's wrong with it just being quicker? When you were making that layout how many dozen times did you have to set positions, apply the changes, load the dialog, then close it and repeat the process because some text was being obscured by another control or things weren't aligned just right? From your previous misunderstanding of what most mIRC dialog creators do, it's clear you haven't used one before. It puzzles me why someone would outright refuse to use something, claiming they preferred their way, without even trying the method which is used and preferred by somewhere around 90% of all scripters (at a complete guess).

I did try one once. It wasn't Dialogue Studio, but something else, though I froget the name as it was some years ago now. At the time I just believed it to be a gimmick more than a fairdinkum tool. It worked reasonably well but didn't do anything that I couldn't do myself. I dpn't dispute that speed can be an important factor for those that have to have it done right now but that issue isn't important to me.

I dispute your claim about 90% of scripters using a visual dialogue editor though. While such things may be popular I doubt they have such a commanding peneration of the 'market'. I know several scripters personally and they do not use such things. In relation to websites their attitude is the same, they use either Notepad or something like U-Edit or Edit Plus.

I am in the middle of replacing my website and I am hand-coding the lot using Notepad, one of the reasons why I don't write mIRC scripts at the moment. I'm in no hurry as I want everything perfect. At the end I will have a site that works in ALL current browser versions on Windows, Unix and Apple and it will also comply with XHTML 1.1 + CSS (Strictly) - something I could not achieve with Dreamweaver and other leading web-dev software.

There is no doubt at all that visual creation is quicker, infact far quicker, but that can come at a cost at times.

I too hand-code websites. For a couple of years solid I've been using Textpad to write my sites to various W3C recommendations/standards (HTML4, CSS1/CSS-P, CSS2, XHTML), simply because the code produced by website design tools is non-standard, incompatible, inefficient, and just plain ugly. That's not an issue for dialog creation though, there are no interpretation or compatability issues, the code is either right or wrong. The popular dialog creation tools will invariably get things right.

As for my 90% estimate, maybe it's wrong. But I can tell you that I know the coding habits of around 30 or so mIRC scripters, and I can't think of a single one who I know that hand-writes their dialog tables. In fact I was probably the last of them to 'convert'.

...because the code produced by website design tools is non-standard, incompatible, inefficient, and just plain ugly.

That is largely because the myriad of browsers out there are authored by consortiums that cannot agree on how to render pages. IE does one thing, NS does another Opera does another and then all Apple browsers including the Apple version of IE does something else again.

Yes, but im not sure how NS or Opera display webpages, but IE i know uses the ActiveX control.. So you really cant blame the software at an application level.. >:D

Also as for the notepad discussion..
Notepad (XP Home/Pro) come with a status bar that displays line/column as well as a goto line (ctrl+g).

Except, again for reasons that boggle my mind, the status bar can't be displayed if you enable word wrap.

hmm.. ur right... I dont use wordwrap anyways so no biggie for me.. but kind of interesting >:D

I have been know to script. I use Dialog Studio occasionally, when I want to get a well-designed dialog up, quickly and easily. Then I tweak the resultant dialog table manually in mIRC's editor.

This is the way every decent scripter I know personally works as well (that I've discussed it with). I know a few scripters *wink*. Notice the use of the word "every"; I don't know anyone who doesn't use it that scripts dialogs -- not anyone. Therefore, based on my own experience, I would say that 90% is quite low.

Dialog Studio CAN do what I cannot...allow me to add controls, size them, move them, etc. visually until I have them where I feel they work best. That would take hours to do by changing the x y w h values by hand (and yes, I and every scripter I know has done that before too -- frequently).

Deciding not to use a tool like Dialog Studio is your choice, but it is based on "old skool" attitude or pure cussedness -- also your choice.

As for the design of your dialog, I think it's entirely too cramped...it desparately needs whitespace around most of the controls. Not much, perhaps, but definitely more than what's there. In Dialog Studio, making those changes would be trivial. Using solely mIRC's editor, it would take you much longer, even if you worked out the changes mathematically...and then tweaked them to what finally looked good.

Nah, if I was 'old school', I'd be using Unix.

Unix has IDEs available as well

True though I am only referring to the fact that Unix has been around longer.

Sorry to break the dream Hammer, but not every scripter you know that does dialogs uses DialogStudio. Give you one guess who doesn't