Hello everybody,

I have never programmed in any variant of Visual Basic before and now I am
having to start - any help gratefully received!

I posted this to comp.lang.basic.visual.misc initially but I got the
feeling that that newsgroup was mainly VB6-based. I really need some
advice from VB.Net users too as counterpoint.

My background is as follows:

I have two pieces of software (robot control packages, to be exact) that
seem to be reliant on Visual Basic - I suspect VBScript, to be exact.

In one of the pieces of software you can enter in VBscript code using an
inbuilt editor to handle variables to be passed on to particular robotic
components, etc.

In order to learn how to program this code I got myself a couple of cheap
Visual Basic books on Amazon. One of these came with the Visual Basic 6
Learning Edition CD (don't they all?! :-)

Already, I have been able to program much more capable windows
applications, with custom windows, different font sizes etc. than either
of the robot control packages offer. Sure, they allow you to bring up
dialogues to enter information etc. but they are rudimentary - the robot
software only allows you choices of "Yes/No/Retry" boxes and so on, or
maybe a 10 character wide box to type into.

When I try cutting and pasting my VB6-LE code into the VBScript editor
within the robot software, it doesn't run. It doesn't like anything but
the most basic dialogue boxes etc. Examining the accompanying VBScript
help files, only the rudimentary dialogue boxes just described seem to be
supported.

OK, so my first question is:
Can you program somehow more capable dialogue boxes in VBScript?

For instance, I want to be able to vary the font size to make the text
easier to see. I also would like to program an application where you have
96 different boxes, and you click on each to activate or deactivate them.

I can see how I could do all this in VB6, but can it be done in VBScript?

Connected with this, what can people tell me about Visual Basic
Applications?
Both pieces of robot software particularly like accessing Excel etc. so it
is tempting to leave Excel running in the background and use VBA.

However, other than accessing cells etc., how does VBApplications compare to
VB6?

Can I use it to flexibly design forms etc.?

Or does it suffer from the same sort of limitations as VBScript?

The robot software can call other applications, so left to myself I would
upgrade to the professional edition of VB6 and design the sort of complex
interfaces that I need in that as standalone programs.
The books I have already cover accessing
Excel cells etc. from within VB6, and even Internet Explorer (I might need
to download data from the Internet at some point)

So, I checked to see how much the professional version of VB6 cost - and
hey presto, Microsoft is withdrawing it and replacing it with VB.Net!
The accompanying blurb seemed to be "We have rewritten Visual Basic so it
is now completely different, in our opinion better, but basically you
can't assume any of your existing VB6 code will work when you upgrade"!

So - which is "better"? VB6 or VB.Net?

Which should I get?

How different are they?

What does VB.Net offer that VB6 doesn't?

What about OS compatability? (I only really need my applications
to run under Windows 2000 Professional, which is what the two robot packages
run under)

Are all my VB6 books basically obsolete now?

What is the difference between the different VB.Net packages?
On the Microsoft web pages, I only saw mention of Visual Studio.Net
Professional and then the Visual Studio.Net Enterprise versions.

Is Visual Studio the same of Visual Basic? - or

Is Visual Basic part of Studio? (I note that my copy of VB6-LE installed as
a folder called "Microsoft Visual Studio", for
instance)

However, on a UK academic reseller's list (from which I can get big
discounts) I saw that VB6Professional was still on sale, but also there was
VB.Net Standard.
What's VB.Net Standard?

How do VB.Net Standard and VB6 Professional compare?

To confuse matters further, VB6 Professional was more expensive that VB.Net
Standard, which is odd if VB.Net is the hot new thing in town and VB6 is
being withdrawn.
Does that mean that VB6 Professional has actually got more features?

What do people think - should I grab VB6 Professional whilst I can and it is
still in stock, or get VB.Net from the outset?!

One other thing - One reply I got from the other newsgroup said that
Windows 2000 does not have the .Net runtime installed at the moment, so
I'd have to install it.

What IS the .Net runtime?
Is this going to cause any problems with my other apps?

(I have had to install and reinstall various service release packs and JET
engines and so forth, none of which I really understand, over the top of
one another to keep up with all the different robot-related packages I
need to get to work with each other, and on one occasion it took our IT
guy a whole day to get my computer running again, having to install
service relase packs one by one on top of each other... )

I know this is a lot of questions but I am a loss as to what to do. VB.Net
seems too new for there to be that many reviews or books about it out there.

I would be very grateful for your comments!

Please feel free to email me off-list.

Many thanks

Oliver

Dr Oliver de Peyer
Division of Protein Structure
National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR)
The Ridgeway, Mill Hill
London NW7 1AA
Tel. Work 0208 816 2161

I am not sure I have time for all of the questions right now, but the main
issue you are having is VBScript is a subset of VB. One of the main
differences is everything is a variant. For example, you will code objects
differently:

Dim objRobot

versus VB

Dim objRobot as MyClass.Robot

If you attempt to type an object in VBScript, you get an error. I would
consider using ASP to code your VBScript, if you do not wish to code
directly, rather than VB, as it uses VBScript. If you use VB, turn off
option explicit and avoid typing your variables. This should conquer most
errors.

It is always hard to debug when there is a disconnect.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA
Author: ADO.NET and XML: ASP.NET on the Edge

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Think outside the box!
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