Visual Basic?

[Kenny]

As a total beginner to VB what program do I need to start learning, there
seems to be different versions?

 

[Tim]

These groups you posted to are not the ones to begin.....

microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb - Visual Basic .NET Group
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion - Visual Basic 6.0 and prior Group

I'd personally go with Visual Basic 6, but I suspect you can't get it anymore
since the .NET (DotNET) has been released.... you may have no choice. But there
are a few different editions of that one, such as standard and
professional......

But anyway, ask in one of those groups. I'm sure they could help you more there
than here.

Tim

 

[Kenny]

Thanks for the reply, will look at different groups. I understand there's a
"free" version of VB from MS but can't find it on their site. Quote from an
e-book I found:

"
This book comes with a CD-ROM that contains the Visual Basic Working

Model, a free version of Visual Basic (courtesy of Microsoft) that'll do

everything you need to do to complete the lessons in this book. How can you

beat that?"

 

[Pat Garard]

You could go a fair way with vbScript 5.6 -
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?productID=&freetext=vbscript&DisplayLang=en.
If you have MS Office, how about VBA which is included in Word, Excel etc?
You can go onto VB6 (still a few copies around) when ready.

 

[David Candy]

There is a limited edition of VB5 available free. If you have office installed you also have VBA installed. This is the macro language in office and is almost identical to VB.

VB5 (Can't make standalone exe. But can debug them)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/tools/cce/default.aspx

VBA 6 (Builtin to Office, also can't make standalone exe and programs have to run while word is running.)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vba/

All Office versions have a basic language. VBA from 97 onwards and app specific basic before.

Also the 98 resource kit and the NT resource kits have Perl, and Regina REXX (basic type language)
..(http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/library/resources/reskit/)

Visual Basic Script is built in. Create a text file with vbs extension and double click it. For help see http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting

QBasic works fine on XP and you can get it http://support.microsoft.com/suppor...loads/release.asp?ReleaseID=14724&redirect=no in the file olddos.exe.

 

[Mark Thomas]

Hi Kenny

I recommend that you download the .net framework sdk 1.1 from here
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...familyid=9b3a2ca6-3647-4070-9f41-a333c6b9181d -
don't bother with VB6 because it's old news and if you're going to learn
something then you just as well learn the most up to date technology. There
is a plethora of information and numerous code samples on the Microsoft web
site - you should get samples with the installation too.

BTW, you probably want to use newsgroups like
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.* to get more information as software
development isn't specific to windows xp. It's got its own newsgroups.

Good luck

M