FGump

Just a quick question for those of you already familiar with VS2005 beta. I briefly worked with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and was very disappointed that when creating a Windows Form, it had the "classic" Windows look to it. I know that creating a manifest file, etc... fixes that. So, I'm wondering if MS has finally given Windows Forms the XP look right out of the box (for buttons, comoboxes, etc..) and did away with the need for manifest files? I saw a quick demo on Visual Basic .NET Express 2005 and it looked like it was there. Should the pro version have everything that Express version has plus more? Thanks, FGump

Not quite what I meant Thanks, but this article is showing how to access a .NET class from VB6. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding it or I wasn't very clear in my question. We currently have a program that my company uses that allows us (as developers) to automate certain parts of it or add new functionality. Let's call this the "main" program. This "main" program has a toolkit that we install and can use in VB6 for communicating with it. So, we open up VB6, create an ActiveX DLL project, include a reference to their toolkit and code away. We can then tell the "main" program to use the DLL that we created in VB6 through a setup screen they provide. This requires telling the "main" program the DLL name and where a function (that they specify) is located since they are calling it. This acts as their entry point. For example, we'll enter DLLFilename.clsName and then the function name enter another textbox. We want to start using .NET instead of VB6 for our coding. However, I don't think that .NET can compile/create an ActiveX DLL (it's not listed as a possible project anyway). So my questions are: 1). Can VB.NET create an equivilant DLL similar to the ActiveX COM DLL that is created in VB6? This would hopefully allow us to code in .NET and still allow our "main" program to use it. 2). Is it possible to include references that were used in VB6 (the toolkit in this example) in .NET (even though it wasn't written for .NET)? Any information would be helpful. Thank you very much. FGump

RealBasic I remember seeing this a while back. http://www.realbasic.com Looks like it may work for you too and should be very easy! Good luck, FGump

I'm a VB6 developer and haven't yet moved onto VB.NET. I just ordered a copy of Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 and am looking forward to start using it. The company where I work has a large workflow program (not developed in-house) that can be customized by telling it to use external COM DLL's. Therefore we've been using VB6 for quite some time to create ActiveX DLL projects that can be called by the workflow program to add new features to it. We would like to start using VB.NET. Can we create a COM DLL using .NET? If not, can anything similar be created with .NET so we can tell our workflow program to call/use it? Thanks for your help. FGump

Recently I've still been reading a lot about people who are really against Microsoft (many of the VB6 developers) for not having created VB.NET to be more compatible with VB6 (thus the petition they were signing.) I understand their point and concern about Microsoft no longer supporting legacy applications (after 2008) and that they could similarly drop support for VB.NET users in the future if they decided to make another major upgrade. Some have said "they did it once, why not do it again. And the fact that MS doesn't really use VB for any of their own applications." At the same time, I feel that MS has really made some good changes to VB and especially with Visual Studio 2005. Personally I'm still using VB6 and am hoping to move into .NET with this new version. I've been reading and watching some videos on VS2005 and like what I've seen. My reason for posting is I was wondering what other people's opinions are about the fact that so many MVP's seemed to have abandoned VB (and Microsoft) in favor of another platform (Delphi or Java). I've heard there were around 6 million VB developers in the world using VB6. How many of those do you think have migrated over to .NET and how many have moved onto somethng else due to what Microsoft has done? It is wise to move from VB6 into VB.NET or should one really pick up C#? I'm just wondering if VB.NET will be something that will be around for a long long time. Thanks for your comments. FGump