Hazel Jule S.

Lazaga BSA-3
AC- Comp 3 July 24, 2017

History of Visual Basic

The History of Visual Basic dates back to 1991 when VB 1.0 was introduced. The
core of Visual Basic was built on the older BASIC language, which was a popular
programming language throughout the 1980s.

Alan Cooper had developed a drag-and-drop interface in the late-1980s,

Microsoft approached him and asked his company, Tripod, to develop the concept into
a form building application. Tripod developed the project for Microsoft. It was called
Ruby and it did not include a programming language at all. Microsoft decided to bundle
it with the BASIC programming language, creating Visual Basic. Ruby also provided the
ability to load dynamic link libraries containing additional controls (then called 'gizmos'),
which later became the VBX interface.

Brief History of Visual Basic (1.0 to 6.0)

Visual Basic 1.0 for Windows was released in May 1991 at a trade show in
Atlanta, Georgia.

Visual Basic 2.0 was released in November 1992. The programming environment
was easier to use, and its speed was improved. Notably, forms became core objects,
thus laying the foundational concepts of class modules as were later offered in VB4.

Visual Basic 3.0 was released in 1993 and came in Standard and Professional
versions. VB3 included version 1.1 of the Microsoft Jet Database Engine that could read
and write Jet (or Access) 1.x databases.

Visual Basic 4.0 was released in August 1995. It was the first version that could
create 32-bit as well as 16-bit Windows programs. It also introduced the ability to write
non-GUI classes in Visual Basic. 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 release in February 1997, Microsoft released Visual Basic
exclusively for 32-bit 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 could 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 ActiveX controls.

Visual Basic 6.0 released in mid 1998 improved in a number of areas including
the ability to create web-based applications. VB6 has been the most successful version
in the history of Visual Basic, it has entered Microsoft's 'non-supported phase' as of
March 2008. Although the development environment is no longer supported, the runtime
is supported on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.

Mainstream Support for Microsoft VB 6.0 ended on March 31, 2005. Extended
support ended in March 2008. In response, the Visual Basic user community expressed
its grave concern and lobbied users to sign a petition to keep the product alive.
Microsoft has so far refused to change their position on the matter.

Brief History of Visual Basic .NET (7.0 to 9.0)

Visual Basic .NET is Microsoft's designated successor to VB 6.0, and is part of

Microsoft's .NET platform. It compiles and runs using the .NET Framework and is not
backwards compatible with VB 6.0. An automated conversion tool exists, but for most
projects automated conversion is impossible. Visual Basic.NET is designed to create
.NET applications, Windows or Web applications, and Web Services.

Visual Basic .NET 2003 was released in April 2003. Microsoft re-engineered
Visual Basic from the ground up, including full object-based programming facilities and
complete integration with the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR).
This release became the first version in the history of visual basic to provide
programming tools for Pocket PCs and other mobile devices, it also had better XML
features and support for Windows Server 2003.

In 2005, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2005, which included Visual Basic 8.0
and the .NET Framework 2.0. Visual Basic 2005 is the name used to refer to this update
as Microsoft decided to drop the .NET portion of the title. The new features included
Design-time expression evaluation, My pseudo- namespace, dynamically generated
classes and Data Source binding for easier database client/server development. These
enhancements were mainly intended to reinforce VB's focus as a rapid application
development platform and further differentiate it from C#.
 In 2005, Microsoft also launched the Visual Basic 2005 Express as part of the
Visual Studio Express product range, The Express editions are free development tools
having a streamlined version of the user interface, and lack more advanced features of
the standard versions. Microsoft created these for students, hobbyists and novices. This
was a milestone event in the history of visual basic as it was the first time VB became
available free of cost.

In 2008, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2008 including VB 9.0 and the .NET
Framework 3.5. Visual Basic 2008 as it is known, includes features like Anonymous
types, support for LINQ, Lambda expressions and XML literals. In 2008, Microsoft also
released the free Visual Basic 2008 Express as an updated version of Visual Basic
2005 Express.

At the time of writing this article Microsoft is testing the beta 2 version of their
upcoming release Visual Basic 2010 (VB 10.0) which is part of the Visual Studio 2010
with .NET Framework 4.0. This version includes many Compiler and Language
improvements like Auto-Implemented Properties, Collection Initializers and Implicit Line
Continuation. The Integrated Development Environment included new features like
Highlighting References and IntelliSense Suggestion Mode.

Thought-out the History of Visual Basic the focus has always been on rapid
application development and that's what makes Visual Basic such a widely used
programming environment.
 How to Open a Saved File in Visual Basic

To open a project or solution from source control

1. In Visual Studio, on the File menu, click Open.

2. Click Project/Solution.

3. In the Open Project dialog box, select Close Solution if not already selected.

4. In the left side of the box, click the <source control plug-in name> channel, select
the database that contains your project or solutions, and then click Open.

5. Browse to and select your project (*.*proj) or solution file (*.sln), change the
destination folder, and then click Open.

6. If you already have a local copy of the solution or project you are opening from
source control, you can decide to overwrite the local copy of all files and projects
in the solution, or keep the local copy. Respond to prompts as needed.

To open a Web project from source control

1. In Visual Studio, on the File menu, click Open.

2. Click Web Site.

3. In the Open Web Site dialog box, click Source Control, and then click Select
Source Control Project.

4. Follow the on-screen instructions to connect to the source control database.

5. On the Create local project from <source-control plug in> dialog box, type a local
path in the Create a new project in the folder box, or click Browse to locate a
local folder.

Select the Web project you want to download from the <plug in name> project to
download box, and then click OK. Respond to prompts as needed.

6. On the Open Web Site dialog box, click Open.

7. If you already have a local copy of the Web project you are opening from source
control, you are prompted to overwrite the local copy of all files and projects in
the solution. Respond to prompts as needed.
 The first step in working with files in Visual Basic is to open the file. This is
achieved using the Visual Basic FileStream class. The FileStream constructor accepts
the file name to be opened as the first parameter, followed by a number of other
parameters defining the mode in which the file is to be opened. These fall into the
categories of FileMode, FileAccess and FileShare. The options available as listed in the
following tables:

FILE MODE OPTIONS

Mode Description

Append If the file exists it is opened. Any writes are

appended to the end of the file.
Requires FileAccess.Write mode

Create Creates a new file, removing old file if it

already exists

CreateNew Creates a new file and returns error if file

already exists

Open Opens an existing file. Returns error if file

does not exist

OpenOrCreate If file already exists it is opened, otherwise

a new file is created

Truncate Opens an existing file and deletes all

existing content

FILE ACCESS OPTIONS

Mode Description
Read Opens the file for reading only.

ReadWrite Opens the file for both reading and writing

Write Opens the file to writing only

FILE SHARE OPTIONS

Mode Description

None The file cannot be opened by any other

program until it is closed by the current
program

Read Other programs may simultaneously open

and read from the file, but not write to it.

ReadWrite ther programs may simultaneously open

and read and write from/to the file.

Write Other programs may simultaneously open

and write to the file, but not read from it.

With the above options in mind, the following code excerpt opens
'C:\Temp\text.txt' in FileMode.OpenOrCreate with FileAccess.ReadWrite permission and
no file sharing, and then closes it:

Dim textFileStream As New IO.FileStream("C:\Temp\test.txt",

IO.FileMode.OpenOrCreate,

IO.FileAccess.ReadWrite, IO.FileShare.None)textFileStream.Close()

Note that the above code example assumes that the 'C:\Temp' directory already
exists. If it does not, the code will fail. Working with Directories is covered in Working
with Directories in Visual Basic.
 How to Save a File in Visual Basic

Put every Visual Basic project into its own separate folder. Create a new folder (
a new name) for each revision. Make your names meaningful.

1. Most projects start out with a generic name of "Project1." Click on the line in the
Project Window that says Project (Project1) Go down to the properties window,
and rename Project1 to something that is appropriate for that task.

2. Click the Save BUTTON. Do not go to the File menu. Clicking the Save button
will bring up a dialog box titled "Save File As" and will require you to name the
form file. I suggest that you name the form using the same name as the project.

3. Be sure to tell Visual Basic WHERE you want to save the project, in the folder
that you have created for it.

4. When you click Save, your form is saved with the name you gave it, and an
extension ".frm"

5. Then, another window opens where you will save the project files. Do so using
the same filename and in the same folder. VB will add the ".vbp" extension.

6. When you want to exit the project, you will be asked if you want to save changes.
Say yes, because at this time VB will make a third file, the .vbw file

7. When working on the hard drive, follow these directions, too. Be sure you know
where your files are, and that you have them all in the same folder. When you
want to transfer something to a floppy to have at school, just copy the whole
folder, making sure that all three files are in the folder.

8. Whatever you do, do not just drag files into a folder. The project file "remembers"
where the form file was originally located. The .vbw file has recorded the path to
the original forms and folders. Make sure the files are saved into the same folder.
You can do "Save Project As" and "Save Form As" from the File menu to see
where they are, and then cancel the "Save As" if they are OK. If the form file is
not in the same folder as the project file, then use the "Save form As" command
to put the form file into the right place.