Visual Basic 6 - Part 3

Programming Environment

In this section, you will learn about the different elements of the Visual Basic development environment. When you start Visual Basic and select a project type, the graphical development environment appears. The following illustration shows some of the development environment's elements.

This section explains each element in the Visual Basic development environment.
This section includes the following topics:

Ø Visual Basic Terminology
Ø Project Types
Ø Toolbox
Ø Form Designer
Ø Project Explorer Window
Ø Properties Window
Ø Code Editor Window
Ø Standard Toolbar
Ø Event – Driven programming
Ø File Types

Visual Basic Terminology

As with any programming language, using Visual Basic requires an understanding of
some common terminology. The following table lists some key terms used in Visual
Basic.

Term Definition
Design time Any time an application is being developed in the Visual Basic
environment.
Run time Any time an application is running. At run time, the programmer
interacts with the application as the user would.
Forms Windows that can be customized to serve as the interface for an
application or as dialog boxes used to gather information from the
user.
Controls Graphic representations of objects, such as buttons, list boxes,
and edit boxes, that users manipulate to provide information to the
application.
Objects A general term used to describe all the forms and controls that
make up a program.
Properties The characteristics of an object such as size, caption, or color.
Methods The actions that an object can perform or that can be performed
on the object.
Events Actions recognized by a form or control. Events occur as the user,
operating system, or application interacts with the objects of a
program.
Event-driven
Programming when a program is event-driven, its code executes in response to
events invoked by the user, operating system, or application. This
differs from procedural programming, where the program starts at
the first line of code and follows a defined path, calling procedures
as needed.