Introducing Visual Basic
VB - a language & a programming environment| Event-driven programming | Which version should you choose? | Distributing applications
Building Your First VB Application
Understanding the Visual Basic IDE | Built-in & ActiveX controls | Properties, methods and events | The code editor | Working with projects
Visual Basic Fundamentals
Structure of a VB application| Numbers & constants | Data types, variable declarations | Operators and connectives
Constructing Visual Basic Code
Control structures | Subs & functions | Scoping & lifetime | Arrays & user-defined types | Built-in functions & statements
Working with Controls
Properties, events & methods | Focus, tab order & access keys | Command Button, Text Box, List Box | Status Bar, Toolbar, ImageList, Slider, Progress Bar, TabStrip, TreeView, ListView, Updown, Animation, Date/Time Picker | Rich Text Box, Chart, Masked Edit, Tabbed Dialog, OLE Drag & Drop
Menus
The Menu Design window | Pop-up menus
Dialogs
Modal & non-modal dialog boxes | InputBox & MsgBox | The Common Dialog control | File-system controls
Forms Properties, Events and Methods System Objects
App, Clipboard, Debug, Screen
Debugging VB Applications
Break mode | Inspecting code & variables | The Call Stack window | Setting up watches | The Immediate & Locals windows
Run-time Errors
Error-handling strategies | The Err object
Collections
Forms, Controls
Introducing MDI
Using the Applications Wizard
Graphics | Graphical methods | Shape & Line controls, Colors
Printing & Fonts
The Print method, Formatting text | Sending output to the printer
Interacting with Users
The Clipboard | Keyboard handlers | Shell, AppActivate
Working with Other Applications
Object linking & embedding (OLE) | The OLE control | Creating & using Automation objects (Word documents and Excel worksheets)
Program Optimization
Speeding up programs | Restricting memory usage
Calling the Windows API
Introducing VB Data Handling
Database concepts, The JET engine | Data Access Objects (DAO) and ActiveX | Data Objects (ADO), Data Control
Introduction to SQL
The SELECT statement | Action queries, Joins
Using VB's Data-bound Features
Databound Controls | The VB6 Data Environment Designer | Reporting
Hands-on Exercises
Experiment with VB's event-driven model | Construct dialog boxes using menus, and both built-in and ActiveX controls | Explore data validation techniques | Build a simple data maintenance application | Use VB to control Word and Excel
