Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book
  • What This Book Will Do for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Visual Basic in 24 Hours?
  • What You Need
  • Files on the Visual Basic Distribution CD-ROM
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Enough! Time Is Ticking!
  • Part I: Introducing Visual Basic
  • Hour 1. Visual Basic at Work
    • What's Visual Basic About?
    • Languages
    • Visual Basic's Various Editions
    • The VB Programming Process
    • Starting Visual Basic
    • Stopping Visual Basic
    • Mastering the Development Environment
    • Help Is at Your Fingertips
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 2.Analyzing Visual Basic Programs
  • Hour 3.Controls and Properties
  • Hour 4.Examining Labels, Buttons, and Text Boxes
  • Part II: Coding the Details
  • Hour 5.Putting Code into Visual Basic
  • Hour 6.Message and Input Boxes
  • Hour 7.Making Decisions
  • Hour 8.Visual Basic Looping
  • Part III:Putting Code to Work
  • Hour 9.Combining Code and Controls
  • Hour 10.List Boxes and Data Lists
  • Hour 11.Additional Controls
  • Hour 12.Dialog Box Basics
  • Part IV:Programming with Data
  • Hour 13.Modular Programming
  • Hour 14.Built-In Functions Save Time
  • Hour 15.Visual Basic Database Basics
  • Hour 16.Printing with Visual Basic
  • Part V:Sprucing Up Programs
  • Hour 17.Menus and Visual Basic
  • Hour 18.The Graphic Image Controls
  • Hour 19.Toolbars and More Graphics
  • Hour 20.Writing Correct Applications
  • Part VI:Advancing Visual Basic Applications
  • Hour 21.Visual Basic and ActiveX
  • Hour 22.Object Basics
  • Hour 23.Distributing Your Applications
  • Hour 24.Online Visual Basic
  • Part VII:Appendixes
  • Appendix A.Operator Precedence
  • Appendix B.Answers
  • Appendix C.Using the CD-ROM

Visual Basic's Various Editions

Visual Basic 6 comes in several flavors. At the time of this writing, little is known about Microsoft's Visual Basic marketing strategy. There are most likely going to be at least two flavors of Visual Basic: the Standard/Professional Edition and the Enterprise Edition.

This book primarily teaches the Professional Edition's features. The Professional Edition offers extra tools, including extra ActiveX add-in controls, better Internet programming support, a Help file compiler, and improved database-access tools. Most professional programmers use the Professional Edition. If Visual Basic 6.0 comes in a "Standard Edition," also called the Learning Edition, you will be happy to know that it provides the least expensive approach to using Visual Basic and gives you a complete development environment, programming language, and many of the same tools the other editions offer. Some people develop only with the Standard Edition and never need anything else. You'll be able to use virtually the entire 24-hour course if you use the Standard Edition. I recommend that you use the Professional Edition if possible.

The Enterprise Edition provides the client/server programmer with extended tools for remote computing and application distribution. Microsoft enhanced VB's performance for Enterprise Edition users working in a networked, distributed environment.

If you do not yet own a VB compiler, I highly recommend that you purchase the new resource kit published by Sams Publishing. It is called Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days: Complete Compiler Edition (ISBN: 0-672-31315-4) and comes with the Visual Basic Learning Edition compiler that you can use to follow along and build the VB applications presented in this tutorial.

Share This