Wizards You Can Build

Beta 1 Release

May 1997

Wizards are small applications that you design and construct to streamline repetitive tasks or to perform difficult tasks for your users. When a user launches your wizard, a series of panes appears on the screen. These panes contain instructions for the user along with text boxes, drop-down lists, and other mechanisms for the user to make choices and offer input. The wizard uses the code you have inserted into it to collect this input from the user and to complete a specific task. The Web Wizard SDK provides tools and instructions for you to construct four types of wizards.

There are three types of wizards included in Visual InterDev™. These established wizards are good models for the developer who wants to get an idea of what is possible.

A site wizard creates an entire Internet or intranet site. When a site wizard is run, it collects information from the user, the Web server, and any other service or application that the user's system can access. This information is brought together by the wizard to create and publish multiple pages to the Web server. The wizard might also perform other services such as creating and publishing database components. When you build a site wizard with the Web Wizard Builder, the builder will create a Visual Basic® project for you.
A page wizard adds one or more pages or components to an existing Web site. When you create a page wizard with the Web Wizard Builder, the builder will open the appropriate existing Visual InterDev project for you.
An HTML wizard adds specific content and/or scripting to an existing Web page. HTML wizards are great for performing small, repetitious tasks. When a user launches your HTML wizard, the wizard places the content you have created on the user's Web page at the click location. When you create an HTML wizard with the Web Wizard Builder, the builder will open the appropriate Visual InterDev project for you.
A stand-alone wizard does not require your user to run Visual InterDev to use. You can create such a wizard as an executable (EXE) program in Visual Basic 5.0 or plug it into another package like Visual Basic 5.0. The SDK documentation does not contain detailed information on the construction of a stand-alone wizard, but it does include samples and tools that you can use to build one.

The following table lists the wizard types, along with the names of the Visual InterDev wizards of that type, and the method of launching that type of wizard.

Wizard Type	Visual InterDev Wizard Names	To Launch
Site wizard	Departmental Site Wizard New Database Wizard Sample Application Wizard Web Project Wizard	From the Visual InterDev File menu, choose New. On the Project tab, select the wizard you want to launch.
File wizard	Data Form Wizard Template Page Wizard	From the Visual InterDev File menu, choose New. On the File Wizards tab, select the wizard you want to launch.
HTML wizard	Data Range Wizard	Right click the location on your page where you want the wizard-generated content. From the Shortcut menu, choose Using HTML Wizards, and then select the wizard you want to launch.

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