Moving from VB6 to VB.NET (Windows Forms)
I’m constantly running into people who are unsure, afraid, overwhelmed, etc. about the move from Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET. The reality is that although there are a lot of differences, there are also a lot of similarities. Depending on the type of development you do, you might find that there is very little difference in how you develop today when moving to VB.NET. I’m not trying to downplay the differences, but I don’t want to jump on the Visual Fred bandwagon either, as I think they are slightly exaggerating how difficult it is to move forward.
The key point being that once you get past the differences, a whole new world of possibilities becomes open to you. Things that just were not possible (or were extremely difficult and possibly unreliable) are now possible with VB.NET.
There is a ton of information that will walk you through the steps of getting from one to the other available from many sources. Here are a few.
Getting Started
- Use the Code Adviser for Visual Basic 6.0 on your existing code prior to upgrading.
- Adding Code-Checking Rules to the Code Adviser for Visual Basic 6
- Dr. GUI .NET 1.1 #0 - Introduction to .NET, Hello World…
- Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
- Raising Events and Responding to Events
- Understanding and Using Assemblies and Namespaces in .NET
- Variable and Method Scope in Microsoft .NET
Upgrading VB6 to VB.NET
- Upgrading from Visual Basic 6.0 (MSDN Documentation)
- Calling COM Components from .NET Clients
- Differences Between Visual Basic 6.0 and .NET Controls
- Introduction to Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET
- Error Handling in Visual Basic .NET
- Managing Versions of an Application
- Replacing API Calls with .NET Framework Classes
- Using ActiveX Controls with Windows Forms in Visual Studio .NET
- Accessing the Registry with Visual Basic .NET
- Life Without Control Arrays in Visual Basic .NET
- Life Without On Error Goto Statements
- Property Bag Changes in Visual Basic .NET
Developing Windows Forms in VB.NET
- Getting Started with Windows Forms
- Creating Classes in Visual Basic .NET
- Creating Components in .NET
- Creating a Windows Form User Control
- Common .NET Libraries for Developers
- Performing Drag-and-Drop Operations
- Working with MDI Applications and Creating Menus
Moving from ADO to ADO.NET
Deployment
Moving Forward
- Inheritance and Interfaces
- Inheritance from a Base Class in Microsoft .NET
- Understanding Method and Operator Overloading
- Overloading Methods in Visual Basic .NET
- Overriding Event Handlers With Visual Basic NET
- Walkthroughs in Visual Basic and Visual C# (MSDN Documentation)
- Asynchronous Execution in Visual Basic .NET
- Creating Your Own Dynamic Properties and Preserve Property Settings in Visual Basic .NET
- Deploying Hybrid Visual Basic 6.0 / Visual Basic .NET Applications
- Exploring the Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit
- Multithreaded Programming with Visual Basic .NET
- Object-Oriented Programming in Visual Basic .NET
- Overriding Event Handlers with Visual Basic .NET
- Performance Optimization in Visual Basic .NET
- Using Classes and Structures in Visual Basic .NET
- Using GDI+ and Visual Basic .NET
- Visual Basic .NET Internals
- Continue reading through the Dr. GUI .NET series.
- Take the online seminars available on MSDN.
- And finally, don’t forget about The .NET Show