VB6 Migration LinkedIn group is now open

clock December 27, 2010 11:22

An interesting new feature for LinkedIn: discussion groups can now be public, so that their contents is visible to all Web surfers, searchable via Google, Bing, and other search engines, and sharable on other social network such as Twitter. (This is also for future posts, past discussions stay private)

We updated our VB6 Migration Linkedin group and opened it to even more people. See you there!

 



[WHITEPAPER] Support library and code maintainability

clock November 6, 2009 10:31

We have just published a new whitepaper:

Support library and code maintainability
In addition to providing 100% functional equivalence with the original VB6 code, VB Migration Partner’s extensive support library is the key for generating code that is readable and easily maintainable. This whitepaper busts a few false myths about support libraries by comparing the concise source code that VB Migration Partner generates with the code produced by other tools that don’t rely on an equally extensive library.

Happy reading!



"Programming Visual Basic 6" 10-year anniversary edition

clock November 5, 2009 06:24

In 1999 Microsoft Press published by first English book, "Programming Visual Basic 6". It was a 1,200 page book that covered virtually every single facet of VB6, the most popular Windows programming language at that time. It was also one of the few books that didn't treat VB-ers as second-class developers who highest aspiration was to put a bunch of controls on a form and write some code in a button's Click event.

The book has had an incredible success, far higher than even Microsoft Press expected, and quickly became the "VB6 Bible" for many developers all around the world. It was translated to 5 or 6 different languages. In Italy alone it sold over 60,000 copies (counting the standard and the pocket edition) and after all these years no other programming book has topped that number here in Italy. According to my calculations, it sold between 200,000 and 250,000 copies all over the world.

Frankly I don't know whether Programming Visual Basic 6 has been the most successful VB6 book every published, but I am rather sure that it has been the one which has sold for longer. In fact, I still receive royalties from this book, which is truly unbeliavable given that Microsoft discontinued VB6 seven years ago.

To face the demand from readers and to celebrate the success of the book, my Italian publisher Mondadori just published "Programmare Visual Basic 6 - 10-year Anniversary Edition". It is a pocket book with a beautiful, golden hard cover. At least here in Italy only another computer book was successful enough to deserve a 10-year special edition. 

Wow! Cool



A .NET library to access Windows Vista and Windows 7 features

clock September 16, 2009 21:58

One of the reasons to migrate your code to .NET is create modern user interface that take advantage of the power of newer versions of Windows. On the other hand, the .NET Framework has been designed to work in the same way over a wide range of Windows versions, including versions that are about ten years old, and therefore it doesn't provide access to the most intriguing features of Vista and Windows 7.

The solution comes in a new library from Microsoft, named Windows API Code Pack for .NET Framework. Version 1.0 of this great tool has been just released, and already implements an impressive range of Windows features:

  • Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
  • Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers.
  • Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects.
  • Explorer Browser Control.
  • Shell property system.
  • Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.
  • Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
  • Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)
  • Sensor Platform APIs
  • Extended Linguistic Services APIs
  • Power Management APIs
  • Application Restart and Recovery APIs
  • Network List Manager APIs
  • Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.
  • Shell Search API support.
  • Drag and Drop functionality for Shell objects.
  • Support for Direct3D and Direct2D interoperability.
  • Support for Typography and Font enumeration DirectWrite APIs. 

The library comes with an extensive help file and all code samples are available in both VB.NET and C#. Last but not the least, the entire source code is provided.



Two sessions at Basta! Italia conference

clock January 26, 2009 02:32

I am giving a couple of migration-related sessions at upcoming Basta! Italia conference, on March 18th in Rome:

   Fun with Regular Expressions
   Tips, Traps, and Techniques in migrating VB6 apps to .NET

In the latter session I'll show many of the techniques we used to ensure that VB Migration Partner has such a high success rate, and will  also give a short demo of our software.



[DOC] Differences between VB6 and .NET controls

clock January 23, 2009 05:30

In these three years we at Code Architects work very hard to study, discover, analyze, dissect, and devise workarounds for the huge set of differences between VB6 and VB.NET.

We put all this knowledge into our VB Migration Partner, of course. But we thought it was fair to make this information available to the many VB6 developers who still have one or more apps to convert, regardless of whether they would buy our software.

Yesterday we more than doubled the amount of material freely available on vbmigration.com, and in fact we decided to split this knowledge in two pages:

The control page currently lists the differences between VB6 built-in controls (forms, textboxes, labels, buttons, etc.) and their Windows Forms counterparts. We plan to cover the remaining controls - such Windows Common Controls, RichTextBox, etc. - in the near future. Stay tuned!