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Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6

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With M$ Office 2010, VBA7 was introduced. If you write VBA projects in 
the 32 bit version they work with the 32 bit office apps. If you write 
VBA projects in the 64 bit version they work with 64 bit office apps.

The same IDE is used for both as far as I can tell, leaving only the 
'compiler' the key difference between the two. I know VBA is 
'interpreted', but it seems to me the ground work for moving to x64 is 
done in terms of language and its IDE (called VB Editor or 'VBE' in M$ 
Office).

I've been duplicating my Excel based apps as stand-alone VB6 Windows 
apps since M$ Office 2007 (v12) introduced the 'Ribbon' to replace 
menus/toolbars. The main reason for doing this was to provide continued 
support for clients not looking to go beyond M$O 2003 (v11), and those 
moving away from M$ Office altogether.

It didn't seem to matter that my VBA apps persisted the same 
menus/toolbars on their own Ribbon tab. The main point of contention 
was the disorientation the new UI presented to users for daily use. 
(IMO, the new UI is more productive!)

The Spread.ocx from Farpoint is what I use in my VB6 apps along with 
3rd party commandbar controls. Unfortunately, they stopped development 
on this component in favor of putting their focus on the .net version 
for Windows Forms. I know the OCX works with VS2005 C# because they 
provide samples for that, but I haven't seen anything beyond those 
VS2005 samples.

It seems that .net has caused the demise of good ActiveX spreadsheet 
controls. I suspect this is due to the fact that (as MikeD suggests) 
there are things that can't be done with COM that .NET supports 
natively via the 'Framework'. VBA7 supports using the Spread.ocx, but 
behavior is very different on MS Office forms than when used on the VS 
Ruby forms similar to the way some of the VBA intrinsic controls behave 
differently. (I can't speak to M$ Office x64 because I haven't used it 
yet!)

Ultimately, Classic 32 bit VB will die when x64 is the norm IMO. That's 
not likely to happen during my lifetime and so no need for me to move 
away from VB. I was looking at going with C++ so I didn't need to 
replace my ActiveX components, but in the later versions of VS the only 
way to do so is via MFC. VS6 C++ is still viable, though no x64 
support.

Classic VB needs a revamp that allows x64 development AND supports 
backward compatibility for using COM components. M$ just has to 'want' 
to go there for this to happen...

-- 
Garry

Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org
Classic VB Users Regroup!
  comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
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New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 Michael Elliott <melliott42@yahoo.com> - 2015-04-30 05:18 -0700
  Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Mayayana" <mayayana@invalid.nospam> - 2015-04-30 08:44 -0400
  Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 Michael Elliott <melliott42@yahoo.com> - 2015-04-30 12:34 -0700
  Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Nobody in particular" <nobody@nowhere.INVALID> - 2015-05-04 18:17 -0700
    Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 ralph <nt_consulting64@yahoo.com> - 2015-05-04 22:31 -0500
      Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Nobody in particular" <nobody@nowhere.INVALID> - 2015-05-05 12:15 -0700
      Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Eduardo" <mm@mm.com> - 2015-05-08 19:57 -0300
        Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 Gordon Levi <gordon@address.invalid> - 2015-05-09 13:41 +1000
          Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Eduardo" <mm@mm.com> - 2015-05-09 01:09 -0300
        Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 GS <gs@v.invalid> - 2015-05-09 05:45 -0400
          Re: New Crowd Funded Effort to Update VB6 "Eduardo" <mm@mm.com> - 2015-05-09 07:06 -0300

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