Visual Basic is a third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft for its Component Object Model (COM) programming model first released in 1991 and declared legacy during 2008. Microsoft intended Visual Basic to be relatively easy to learn and use.

6.0 / 1998; 19 years ago ( 1998), and Website Major Influenced by Influenced,, and Visual Basic is a and (IDE) from for its (COM) programming model first released in 1991 and declared during 2008. Microsoft intended Visual Basic to be relatively easy to learn and use. Visual Basic was derived from, a user-friendly programming language designed for beginners, and it enables the of applications, access to using,, or, and creation of controls and objects. A programmer can create an application using the provided by the Visual Basic program itself.

Over time the community of programmers developed third-party components. Programs written in Visual Basic can also use the, which requires external function declarations.

The final release was version 6 in 1998 (now known simply as Visual Basic). On April 8, 2008, Microsoft stopped supporting Visual Basic 6.0. The Microsoft Visual Basic team still maintains compatibility for Visual Basic 6.0 applications on, including R2,,,, and through its 'It Just Works' program.

In 2014, some still preferred Visual Basic 6.0 over its successor,. In 2014 some developers lobbied for a new version of Visual Basic 6.0. In 2016, Visual Basic 6.0 won the technical impact award at The 19th Annual D.I.C.E. A dialect of Visual Basic, (VBA), is used as a macro or scripting language within several Microsoft applications, including.

Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • Language features [ ] Like the programming language, Visual Basic was designed for an easy. Programmers can create both simple and complex applications. Programming in VB is a combination of visually arranging or on a, specifying attributes and actions for those components, and writing additional lines of for more functionality. Since VB defines default attributes and actions for the components, a programmer can develop a simple program without writing much code. Programs built with earlier versions suffered performance problems, but faster computers and native code compilation has made this less of an issue.

[ ] Though VB programs can be compiled into native code executables, they still require the presence of around 1 MB of runtime libraries. Core runtime libraries are included by default in and later, but extended runtime components still have to be installed. Earlier versions of (95/98/NT), require that the runtime libraries be distributed with the executable. An empty form in Visual Basic 6 Forms are created using techniques.

A tool is used to place controls (e.g., text boxes, buttons, etc.) on the form (window). Controls have and associated with them.

Default values are provided when the control is created, but may be changed by the programmer. Many attribute values can be modified during run time based on user actions or changes in the environment, providing a dynamic application. For example, code can be inserted into the form resize event handler to reposition a control so that it remains centered on the form, expands to fill up the form, etc. By inserting code into the event handler for a keypress in a text box, the program can automatically translate the case of the text being entered, or even prevent certain characters from being inserted. Visual Basic can create executables (EXE files),, or DLL files, but is primarily used to develop Windows applications and to interface database systems.

Dialog boxes with less functionality can be used to provide pop-up capabilities. Controls provide the basic functionality of the application, while programmers can insert additional logic within the appropriate event handlers. For example, a drop-down combination box automatically displays a list.

When the user selects an element, an event handler is called that executes code that the programmer created to perform the action for that list item. Alternatively, a Visual Basic component can have no user interface, and instead provide ActiveX objects to other programs via (COM). This allows for processing or an add-in module.

The runtime recovers unused memory using, which depends on variables passing out of scope or being set to Nothing, avoiding the problem of common to other languages. There is a large library of utility objects, and the language provides basic support for. Unlike many other programming languages, Visual Basic is generally not case-sensitive—though it transforms into a standard case configuration and forces the case of variable names to conform to the case of the entry in the symbol table. String comparisons are case sensitive by default. The Visual Basic compiler is shared with other Visual Studio languages (C, C++). Nevertheless, by default the restrictions in the IDE do not allow creation of some targets (Windows model DLLs) and threading models, but over the years, developers have bypassed these restrictions.

Characteristics [ ]. The code windows in Visual Basic, showing a function using the If, Then, Else and Dim statements.

Visual Basic builds upon the characteristics of BASIC. • There are no line numbers as in earlier BASIC, code is grouped into subroutines or methods: Sub.End Sub.

• Code Statements have no terminating character other than a line ending (carriage return/line feed). Versions since at least VB 3.0 allowed that statements can be implicitly multi-line with concatenation of strings or explicitly using the underscore character (_) at the end of lines.

• Code comments are done with a single apostrophe (') character. ' This is a comment • Looping statement blocks begin and end with keywords: Do.Loop, While.End While, For.Next.

• Multiple variable assignment is not possible. A = B = C does not imply that the values of A, B and C are equal. The Boolean result of 'Is B = C?' Is stored in A.

The result stored in A would therefore be either false or true. • constant True has numeric value −1. This is because the Boolean data type is stored as a 16-bit signed integer. In this construct −1 evaluates to 16 binary 1s (the Boolean value True), and 0 as 16 0s (the Boolean value False). This is apparent when performing a (bitwise) Not operation on a 16-bit signed integer value 0, which returns the integer value −1, in other words True = Not False.

This inherent functionality becomes especially useful when performing logical operations on the individual bits of an integer such as And, Or, Xor and Not. This definition of True is also consistent with BASIC since the early 1970s Microsoft BASIC implementation and is also related to the characteristics of CPU instructions at the time. • Logical and bitwise operators are unified. This is unlike some C-derived languages (such as ), which have separate logical and bitwise operators. This again is a traditional feature of BASIC.

• Variable base. Arrays are declared by specifying the upper and lower bounds in a way similar to and. It is also possible to use the Option Base statement to set the default lower bound.

Use of the Option Base statement can lead to confusion when reading Visual Basic code and is best avoided by always explicitly specifying the lower bound of the array. This lower bound is not limited to 0 or 1, because it can also be set by declaration.

In this way, both the lower and upper bounds are programmable. In more subscript-limited languages, the lower bound of the array is not variable.

This uncommon trait does exist in but not in. OPTION BASE was introduced by ANSI, with the standard for ANSI Minimal BASIC in the late 1970s. • Relatively strong integration with the and the. The native types for strings and arrays are the dedicated COM types, BSTR and SAFEARRAY. • as the default behavior when converting real numbers to integers with the Round function.? Round(2.5, 0) gives 2,?

Round(3.5, 0) gives 4. • Integers are automatically promoted to reals in expressions that involve the normal division operator ( /) so that division of one integer by another produces the intuitively correct result.

VB provides a specific integer divide operator ( ) that does truncate. • By default, if a variable has not been declared or if no type declaration character is specified, the variable is of type.

However this can be changed with Deftype statements such as DefInt, DefBool, DefVar, DefObj, DefStr. Maxsea Version 12 6 4 Keygen For Mac on this page. There are 12 Deftype statements in total offered by Visual Basic 6.0. The default type may be overridden for a specific declaration by using a special suffix character on the variable name ( # for Double,! For Single, & for Long,% for Integer, $ for String, and @ for Currency) or using the key phrase As (type). VB can also be set in a mode that only explicitly declared variables can be used with the command Option Explicit. Alan Cooper created the drag-and-drop design for the user interface of Visual Basic.

Visual Basic 1.0 was introduced in 1991. The drag and drop design for creating the user interface is derived from a prototype form generator developed by and his company called Tripod. [ ] Microsoft contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system for, under the code name Ruby (no relation to the later ).

Tripod did not include a programming language at all. Microsoft decided to combine Ruby with the Basic language to create Visual Basic. The Ruby interface generator provided the 'visual' part of Visual Basic and this was combined with the 'EB' Embedded BASIC engine designed for Microsoft's abandoned 'Omega' database system. Ruby also provided the ability to load containing additional controls (then called 'gizmos'), which later became the interface. VB DOS icon 1990s [ ] • Project 'basic Thunder' was initiated in 1990. Thunder persisted through to the last release of Visual Basic in the name of the primary internal function, 'ThunderRTMain'. • Visual Basic 1.0 (May 1991) was released for Windows at the Comdex/Windows World trade show in Atlanta, Georgia.

• Visual Basic 1.0 for was released in September 1992. The language itself was not quite compatible with Visual Basic for Windows, as it was actually the next version of Microsoft's DOS-based BASIC compilers, and BASIC Professional Development System. The interface used a, using characters to simulate the appearance of a. • Visual Basic 2.0 was released in November 1992. The programming environment was easier to use, and its speed was improved.

Notably, forms became instantiable objects, thus laying the foundational concepts of class modules as were later offered in VB4. • Visual Basic 3.0 was released in the summer of 1993 and came in Standard and Professional versions. VB3 included version 1.1 of the that could read and write Jet (or Access) 1.x databases.

• Visual Basic 4.0 (August 1995) was the first version that could create as well as Windows programs. It has three editions; Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.

It also introduced the ability to write non-GUI classes in Visual Basic. Incompatibilities between different releases of VB4 caused installation and operation problems. While previous versions of Visual Basic had used VBX controls, Visual Basic now used OLE controls (with files names ending in.OCX) instead. These were later to be named ActiveX controls.

• With version 5.0 (February 1997), Microsoft released Visual Basic exclusively for versions of Windows. Programmers who preferred to write 16-bit programs were able to import programs written in Visual Basic 4.0 to Visual Basic 5.0, and Visual Basic 5.0 programs can easily be converted with Visual Basic 4.0. Visual Basic 5.0 also introduced the ability to create custom user controls, as well as the ability to compile to native Windows executable code, speeding up calculation-intensive code execution. A free, downloadable Control Creation Edition was also released for creation of. It was also used as an introductory form of Visual Basic: a regular.exe project could be created and run in the IDE, but not compiled. • Visual Basic 6.0 (Mid-1998) improved in a number of areas including the ability to create web-based applications. 2000s [ ] • Visual Basic 6.0 extended support ended in March 2008; however, primary components of the Visual Basic 6 development environment run in all 32-bit versions of Windows up to and including 8.1.

[ ] • Mainstream Support for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 ended on March 31, 2005. Extended support ended in March 2008. In response, the Visual Basic user community expressed its concern and lobbied users to sign a petition to keep the product alive, to no avail.

Derivative languages [ ] has developed derivatives of Visual Basic for use in. Visual Basic itself is derived heavily from, and subsequently has been replaced with a platform version. Some of the derived languages are: • (VBA) is included in many Microsoft applications (), and also in many third-party products like,,,,, and Business Objects Desktop Intelligence. There are small inconsistencies in the way VBA is implemented in different applications, but it is largely the same language as Visual Basic 6.0 and uses the same runtime library. Visual Basic development ended with 6.0, but in 2010 Microsoft introduced VBA 7 to provide extended features and add 64-bit support.

• is the default language for. It can be used in scripting and client-side scripting. It resembles VB in, but is a separate language—executed by vbscript.dll instead of the VB runtime. ASP and VBScript should not be confused with, which uses the for compiled web pages. • is Microsoft's designated successor to Visual Basic 6.0, and is part of Microsoft's platform.

Visual Basic.NET compiles and runs using the.NET Framework. It is not with Visual Basic 6.0. An automated conversion tool exists, but fully automated conversion for most projects is impossible. • is a Visual Basic compatible interpreter that originated in office suite. • is a Visual Basic inspired programming language for the Linux operating system.

It is not a clone of Visual Basic, but it does have the ability to convert Visual Basic programs to Gambas. • is a third-party VBA variant used with various software, and available for programmers to use to build a macro facility into their programmes. • is a VBA variant available in and. • Later versions of implement access to VBA as one of the macro/scripting languages, the other major ones being and • Earlier versions of use a variant of Visual Basic called Performance and other issues [ ] Earlier versions of Visual Basic (prior to version 5) compiled the code to only.

The P-Code is interpreted by the language runtime. The benefits of P-Code include portability and smaller binary file sizes, but it usually slows down the execution, since having a runtime adds an additional layer of interpretation. Visual Basic applications require Microsoft Visual Basic runtime MSVBVMxx.DLL, where xx is the relevant version number, either 50 or 60.

MSVBVM60.dll comes as standard with Windows in all editions from Windows 98 to Windows 7 (some editions of Windows 7 do not include it). A Windows 95 machine would however require inclusion with the installer of whichever DLL was needed by the program. Visual Basic 5 and 6 can compile code to either native or P-Code but in either case the runtime is still required for built in functions and forms management. Criticisms levelled at Visual Basic editions prior to VB.NET include: • Versioning problems associated with various runtime, known as ' • Poor support for • Can only create multi- applications, using ActiveX • have a greater performance and storage 'overhead' than • Dependency on complex and fragile (COM) Registry entries Legacy development and support [ ] All versions of the Visual Basic development environment from 1.0 to 6.0 were retired by Microsoft by 2008, and are therefore no longer supported.

The associated runtime environments are also unsupported, except for the Visual Basic 6 core runtime environment, which Microsoft officially supports for the lifetime of and. Third party components that shipped with Visual Studio 6.0 are not included in this support statement. Some legacy Visual Basic components may still work on newer platforms, despite being unsupported by Microsoft and other vendors. Documentation for Visual Basic 6.0, its application programming interface and tools is best covered in the last release before Visual Studio.NET 2002. Later releases of MSDN focused on.NET development and had significant parts of the Visual Basic 6.0 programming documentation removed as the language evolved, and support for older code ended. Although vendor support for Visual Basic 6 has ended, and the product has never been supported on the latest versions of Windows, key parts of the environment still work on newer platforms. It is possible to get a subset of the development environment working on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

Example code [ ] The following code snippet displays a message box saying 'Hello, World!' As the window loads. • • – a function in several editions of Visual Basic roughly equivalent to the conditional operator of C and related languages. Related programming languages: • • - Rapid application development tool for mobile and IoT solutions. • - free software language inspired by Visual Basic • – harness DirectX from BASIC applications • – competitor to Visual Basic • – a programming language rooting from. • – educational tool for learning BASIC language concepts.

• – A language based on the BASIC- dialect • – Competitor to Visual Basic • – A language based on the BASIC- dialect • – Competitor to Visual Basic • – SDK with Visual Basic 6 IDE fork. • Root, Randal; Romero Sweeney, Mary (2006). A tester's guide to.NET programming.. You can choose a language based on how easy it is to learn. For beginners, Visual Basic is a good choice. [~snip] A big advantage of Visual Basic is that it is a popular language since it is easy to learn.

• Plant, Robert T.; Murrell, Stephen (2007). An executive's guide to information technology.. Summary of positive issues: Visual Basic is easy to learn and widely available. • ^ ISpliter..

Retrieved 3 April 2014. • violent, ken.. Retrieved 5 April 2014. Retrieved 5 April 2014. Planet Source Code. Retrieved 4 April 2014. • Jeff, Martin..

Retrieved 5 April 2014. Retrieved 2015-10-15. • Richard, Grigonis.. Thursday, 27 Mar 2014 03:20 PM.

Retrieved 8 April 2014. • ^ at the (archived 24 October 2014) • J, Roxe.. Retrieved 5 April 2014. • Dan, Mabbutt.. Retrieved 5 April 2014. Retrieved 2016-02-29. Retrieved 2016-02-29.

Retrieved 2016-02-29. • Microsoft Visual Basic Programmer's Guide Version 3.0 - Microsoft Corporation 1993 • - Microsoft.com Reference Visual Basic Language • - Microsoft.com Visual Basic Programming Guide. Last updated December 4, 2017 • In most languages, True is mapped to a non-zero numeric value, often 1 or -1. Retrieved 2009-06-16.

Microsoft Support. Retrieved 2014-01-25. • Cooper, Alan.. 22 april 1996. Retrieved 8 March 2017. Rian ' Petot ' Danao I.

9 Microsoft Visual Basic Express allows us to develop applications for Windows and compile them visually as executable files. Like previous versions of Visual Basic, the programming interface is completely visual, with items such as buttons, progress bars and labels that you are able to drag to the form, edit their properties and then adjust the programming, which with a few exceptions is largely the same as previous editions.

Microsoft Visual Basic takes advantage of the latest technologies such as Windows themes, Multithreading, connectivity to SQL, Microsoft.NET Framework Forms and data. It includes a system containing the 400 most frequently used pieces of code syntax highlighting and suggesting changes to it, designed to save time and work for programmers.

Applications, screen savers or DLL libraries can be compiled with the complete and configurable publishing system included, and uploaded directly to an FTP server or burnt to a local address.