Concise Visual Basic 6.0 Course

Understanding the Visual Basic® Development Tools

The Visual Basic® Development Program, which is also known as the Visual Basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE), is a program that you can use to create your own programs. In this lesson, we will look at the VB IDE in general, and in the upcoming lessons, you will learn how to use each development program’s component in more detail.

1. Using Visual Basic® to Develop Programs

You can use VB IDE to create a new project or work on the existing one. In most cases when you create a typical VB program you will have to accomplish at least two major types of development work: designing the user interface and writing the program’s code. You need to create a user interface so that the program can generate corresponding computer screens at runtime while writing code is necessary to implement the program’s functionality.

a) The User Interface Design

When you create a user interface, you will actually be doing some graphical design work. The result of this work is a visual image that will be displayed to the program’s user. Most windows created by your program will be based on the VB form control. You will learn more about the VB form in Lesson 3.

Creating a proper user interface will require some graphical design work. You can accomplish this work mostly by dragging and dropping various VB controls onto the form. Once you have placed all the controls on the form you may also want to set their graphical properties such as their width, height, background color and so on. The result of this work is a window or a computer screen that will be displayed when the program runs.

b) Writing Code

Writing code to implement the program’s functionality is the most challenging part of the development work. It is also very important. You have to learn a programming language to be able to write a function or a procedure that will be executed when the program runs. Although this is the most complicated part of the work, it is also very creative and intellectually challenging work. For those of you who do not mind putting your intellects under the high pressure of creative work this kind of brainstorm may be great and highly rewarding fun. In most cases, you will write code in the event procedures, independent procedures or functions.