Question of moving from VB6

P

Phil

Not having lots of luck searching groups.google...

We are still using VB6 at work, so I bought my own copy of 2003 .Net.
I have to say I love the new auto-hiding toolbox & properties. But I
know it wil take some time for me to migrate programs over to the new
..net format... so....

Is it posible to use the new .net ide/program to code VB6 code. In
other words can I at least use 2003 .Net to continue write code in VB6
language?
 
B

Bob

Just out of curiosity, Phil, could you decribe your VB6 applications, such
as operational relevance, frequncy of changes, number of forms, lines of
code, coders?

Bob
 
H

Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]

Phil said:
We are still using VB6 at work, so I bought my own copy of 2003 .Net.
I have to say I love the new auto-hiding toolbox & properties. But I
know it wil take some time for me to migrate programs over to the new
.net format... so....

Is it posible to use the new .net ide/program to code VB6 code. In
other words can I at least use 2003 .Net to continue write code in VB6
language?

No, you cannot (that was IMO one of the biggest mistakes Microsoft ever
made!). You may want to take a look at MZ-Tools, for example, which will
extend the VB6 IDE by some features that are now included in VB 2002/2003
(VS.NET) (<URL:http://www.mztools.com/v3/features.htm>).
 
P

Phil

Sure.

For me they are of 2 types: Home stuff I programmed to make my wife's
work-life easier, and the programs I do for work.

The ones for my wife are simpler. They involve frontends to
relational databases in Access (with validations, pull down
boxes..etc) and then print forms to a Crystal Report.

A lot of her work is done in a grid (using Infragistics Ultragrid
2.0). A lot of basic stuff like create/delete/edit client, weekly
logs, keep track of which clients made it to classes, print out a
certificate per each client per class, or print a list of which
classes they attented and which classes they still need to take.

Work is actually more of the same, but much larger. We use SQL server
at work. I do a lot more file manipulations (copy, read/write, make,
manipulate..etc).

One program (our largest) has something like 15 forms, 10 modules (to
keep things neat), and about 10 crystal reports.

I probably have about a dozed program out in the building and more
being made regularly.

--

Most of our programs stay the same, with minor bug fixes. The big one
I mentioned is being re-written because of new servers. I'm taking
the oppertunity to remove the data environment and replacing all sql
calls with code, and adding error checking made after the program was
written (the code traps erros and puts them into an error database for
me to folow up on).

The wife's one is about 2 weeks old - so I could literally start from
scratch using .net - but there's the learning curve.

At work there are 2 programmers - myself, and a more sql expert who
also knows vb. His mentality is to stick with vb6 - because it does
everything we need and we know everything we need to.

I'm more along the lines of being waaay behind the technology curve,
so I was thinking about using .net for my own projects at home, and
starting to do some work programs in .net also (after learning curve).
 
P

Phil

I actually used to use mztools, and had a problem where it wouldn't
run and forgot about it. But as far I as know it can't do the thing I
like most about the .net ide - it can't auto hide the
tolbox/properties/forms windows. They take up sooooo much space
(especially on my new tablet pc) and manually resizing them all the
time is a pain in the butt.
 
C

Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]

Phil said:
I actually used to use mztools, and had a problem where it wouldn't
run and forgot about it. But as far I as know it can't do the thing I
like most about the .net ide - it can't auto hide the
tolbox/properties/forms windows.

No, they can´t, but, just curious, what problem did you have? Did you
contact me?

--

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools 4.0: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET
You can code, design and document much faster.
http://www.mztools.com
 
C

Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]

Herfried K. Wagner said:
You may want to take a look at MZ-Tools, for example, which will extend
the VB6 IDE by some features that are now included in VB 2002/2003
(VS.NET) (<URL:http://www.mztools.com/v3/features.htm>).

Hi Herfried,

MZ-Tools 3.0 for VB6 included a lot of features (40+) but only a few of them
are implemented in VS.NET 2002/2003 (task list, external utilities,...) or
the ones implemented leave much to be desired, such the Find/Find in Files
(compare it with the new of v4). So, I released a version 4.0 for VS.NET
which has also 40+ features. You can take a look at
http://www.mztools.com/v4/mztools4.htm. If you are interested let me know,
there are free licenses for .NET MVPs...

--

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools 4.0: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET
You can code, design and document much faster.
http://www.mztools.com
 
P

Phil

No, they can´t, but, just curious, what problem did you have? Did you
contact me?

It was a local problem on my pc, I think. This was at least 2 years
ago, but digging through my memory....hmm..

I seem to recall an error loading.. either a corrupt dll.. or missing
component. I can't recall exactly.

I never really used much of the tools - my favorite was the find all -
to easily find all references to a procedure I wrote, without lots of
find next's.

So at the time I had the problem, I didn't pursue anything beyond
re-installing (which didn't help) and kind of forgot about them when I
switched to a newer computer (sorry).
 

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