Project 5

DTUI Booksite

Project 5: Using Buttons and Text Boxes

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Document Contents

What This Assignment Is About
What You Are To Do
What You Are To Hand In
How You Will Be Graded
Grading Sheet (for Instructor Use)

What This Assignment Is About

This assignment is intended to get you started on using Visual Basic and thinking seriously about how you handle program input and output. It requires you to explore the uses of buttons and text boxes and encourages you to think creatively about what goes into developing a Windows application.

What You Are To Do

Program Specification

You are a member of a civic club involved in a community service project to raise money for the local Girls’ or Boys’ Club. The project works as follows:

Your club has made a fund-raising arrangement with a number of local supermarkets. The supermarkets will donate 5% of the gross receipts from groceries bought by members of your club that are made with special coupons which the supermarket provides. The coupons come in $5.00, $10.00, and $25.00 denominations, and people may buy as many as they like. Your club buys the coupons from the supermarket at $4.75 for the $5.00 coupons (the 5% savings comes to 25¢), $9.50 for the $10.00 coupons, and $23.75 for the $25.00 coupons. The club then sells the coupons to the members at face value, keeping the 5% profit to donate to the Girls’ or Boys’ Club.

You are to design and implement the interface to a program that your club treasurer can use to do the accounting for this project. (It doesn’t really need to save the data to disk.) The program must keep track of who bought what coupons when, as well as the purchaser’s name, address, and phone number.

For this assignment you only need to use one interaction form (although you can use more if you like). The form must allow the treasurer to enter the date (if it is not entered automatically), the purchaser’s name, address, and phone number, and how many of each coupon he or she bought. The interface should display the total amount due.

Program Design Considerations

There are many issues to consider for this assignment. How should the input text boxes be arranged? How should they be labeled? What tab order is appropriate? Should users enter the number of coupons they want or the amount of money they want to spend? How should users indicate these amounts? Where should the program’s output appear? When should the total be computed? What functions are needed on buttons? I could go on and on, but the key issue here is to get you to think about these considerations, not just the details of Visual Basic programming.

You can write the entire basic program for this assignment using only buttons and text boxes. Of course, you will quickly see that much more can be done than the basic assignment, and I encourage you to explore and experiment with features you discover on-line, in the text, and from other students.

Some Program Features to Consider

investigate the LostFocus procedure – it’s very nice for this type of program
set logical tab order
don’t let user change calculated values
make pressing Return equivalent to pressing Tab
if you use scroll bars, make the limits reasonable
do calculations automatically when a certain event occurs
provide helpful error messages
make your screen aesthetically pleasing
experiment with color
only allow numeric keys or decimal points to be entered in numeric fields
add clear directions for the user

What You Are To Hand In

Copy or zip to a diskette that you will hand in:

the source (.frm and .bas) files you created
the project (.vbp) file Visual Basic created
the executable (.exe) file that Visual Basic generated from these files

Mark your name clearly on the diskette and label it Assignment No. 1;.

Hand in your diskette at the beginning of class on the day it is due.

How You Will Be Graded

This assignment will be graded on a 20-point system with points awarded as follows:

Criteria	Possible Points	Your Score
Program Integrity - program accepts textual input and converts it to numeric values - program handles a wide range of erroneous user input - program displays correct sale total - program allows user to move freely between fields - program exits cleanly	4
Documentation and Formatting - all variables and procedures have adequate descriptions - code has adequate in-line comments, whitespace, and indentation - program appears that it can be maintained by another programmer	4
Input Processing and Error Handling - prompts for input are clear and unambiguous - flow of input focus is natural and follows standard conventions - error messages for incorrect input are appropriate	4
Screen Layout and Message Clarity - overall appearance is attractive - user has clear indicators for what s/he is supposed to do - graphics and color are used appropriately	4
Enhancements Beyond the Basic Assignment the following are only suggestions, others are possible - incorporate picture elements and/or buttons - change the mouse pointer as it passes over clickable areas - provide on-line instructions and context-sensitive pop-up help - allow only numbers to be entered in numeric fields - use a message box to confirm user request to exit the program - use your imagination! be creative! surprise and teach me! Note: Enhancement points are given for significant extra efforts, not simple changes.	4

Jesse Heines

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Last Updated: 12 March 2000