Visual Basic 6.0 Resources

Visual Basic 6.0 was one of the most popular programming environments and we know that there are a lot of you who are developing in it today. The MSDN Library contains some of the best content for Visual Basic 6.0 experts and we’re going to surface that here. We’ll also provide pointers to some of the vibrant community resources that exist for Visual Basic 6.0.

Partner Tools & Solutions Leverage these free tools and solutions from our partners to assist you with a more complete migration from Visual Basic 6 to .NET.

Visual Basic 6.0 Resources

• Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows
  The Visual Basic team's goal is that Visual Basic 6.0 applications that run on Windows XP will also run on Windows Vista and Windows 7. The Visual Basic team is also committed to the Visual Basic 6.0 development environment running on Windows Vista.
• Visual Basic 6.0 on MSDN Library
  Visual Basic 6.0 resources including product documentation, code samples, frequently asked questions, and downloads.
• Visual Basic Documentation Map
  This map provides links to Visual Basic documentation in the MSDN Library.
• Product Family Life-Cycle Guidelines for Visual Basic 6.0
  The Microsoft Visual Basic® 6.0 product family life-cycle guidelines provide advanced notification of planned changes regarding the availability of support for the Visual Basic 6.0 family of products. This information will assist customers and partners with product planning and IT decisions.
• Visual Basic 6.0 Samples Documentation
  Documentation on how to run samples included with Visual Basic 6.0
• Additional Visual Basic 5.0 & 6.0 Samples
  Download additional controls, componenents and samples for Visual Basic 5.0 and 6.0
• Visual Basic 6.0 Downloads
  Download important updates and additional code samples for Visual Basic 6
• Visual Basic Upgrade and Migration Resources
  Free tools and training on how to move from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET.

General Topics

• Visual Basic 6.0 Properties Descriptions and their Settings
  This list of Visual Basic 6.0 form object properties along with descriptions and settings, serves as a handy reference to anyone using Visual Basic 6.0. This material is presented at the beginning of an article comparing Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET objects.
• Text Box Defaults Add-In Project for Microsoft Publisher 2002
  The Text Box Defaults project is a Visual Basic 6.0 project that can be compiled into a Microsoft Publisher 2002 add-in toolbar. This toolbar allows the user to extract property settings from an existing text box and then create new text boxes with those settings.
• Creating a 404 Error Tracker with Visual Basic 6.0
  This article will walk you through the steps of building a Visual Basic 6.0 ActiveX dynamic-link library (DLL) that will make it easy and efficient for you to track and prevent 404 (Not Found) errors on your site.
• Interprocess Communications Using Registered Messages from Visual Basic
  Use the RegisterWindowMessage and SendMessage API calls to create your own window messages and send them between windows so that your programs can communicate with each other. In this example, the server has the job of watching a printer queue and sending a message to every interested client, whenever an event occurs.
• VBMake Script
  VBMake.vbs is a VBScript make utility for intelligently building Microsoft Visual Basic projects. It only builds projects when the target executable is older than the source files.
• Controls shipped in Visual Basic 6.0
  This article lists all the intrinsic and ActiveX controls shipped in Visual Basic 6.0.
• Printing Text
  Use the Print method in Visual Basic to print text.
• Text-To-Speech
  This tutorial will show you how to create a very simple program that will actually speak.

Database Programming

• OLE DB is the Answer!
  By using ADO in conjunction with OLE DB, you can talk to Access, SQL Server, or any other data source by simply using the ADO object model.
• Developing Applications with the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Data Object Wizard
  The Visual Basic Data Object Wizard (DOW) is a Visual Basic Add In Wizard that can be used to create data Classes and User Controls that display and manipulate data.
• Reacquaint Yourself with the Object Browser
  This article discusses the ADO Errors Collection.
• Determining the Entropy of the Values We Added
  Explore data mining: an exciting technique that uses the power of databases to extract meaningful knowledge from a mountain of data.
• Fun with Schemas
  By using the OpenSchema method, you can spy on information about any particular data source. You can easily get information about the data source, such as the tables on the server and the columns in those tables.

Web Development

• Getting Started with Visual Basic 6.0 and XML
  Learn how to get started using XML in Visual Basic 6.0. This article provides several examples showing how you can use XML documents in Visual Basic 6.0 applications.
• Serving the Web: HTML Scraping with Visual Basic and AsyncRead
  This article takes at look at a sample application that uses AsyncRead to retrieve data. The core of this application is an ActiveX control that takes a stock symbol (such as MSFT) and retrieves several pieces of information about the stock from the NASDAQ Web site.
• The WebClass Developer's Primer
  This article introduces WebClasses and the WebClass development model.

Networking

• Issuing FTP Commands
  The Internet Transfer control will automatically establish an FTP session the first time you execute an FTP command. This table lists the FTP commands for the control.
• Programming with the Internet Transfer Control
  This article describes a program called the Internet Updater, which demonstrates the use of the Internet Transfer control. The Internet Updater is used to update an application by examining each file in the application and choosing those files that have newer versions.

Embedded VB

• Getting Started: Microsoft Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic 6.0
  This document will walk you through the creation of your first Windows CE application written in Microsoft Visual Basic. We will help you set up an emulation environment and get you up and building your first database application quickly.
• Microsoft Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic 6.0 Guided Tour
  This document will take you on a tour of the features contained in the Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic 6.0. You will learn how to create a simple application that is designed on a traditional Windows desktop and executed on a Windows CE device, and how to access data stored in SQL Server