A variety of tools, controls, libraries, downloads, and general whatnot that I've found useful, or found a need to produce, over the years. Generally speaking, what's here isn't provided with source code. I hope you still see it worthwhile.
Tools I've Written
- CCRP High-Performance Timer Library
- I'm happy to say, this is one that's become a classic.
A real pleasure to have written. It's in use by
many thousands of corporations, government agencies, and just plain folks.
Follow the link above to find out more about this 1ms resolution
multimedia timer library "written with and for Classic VB."
- Console Clipboard Utilities
- Simple little tools that read and write the Windows clipboard from the
console. They accept standard input, and write standard output, so you can
use them with pipes and redirection.
- vbMarkUp Utility
- This is the tool I use to colorize "VBish" code that I post here on this
website. It's also useful for printing colorized code, via (for example)
pasting it into Word. I've made an online demo of this tool available for
you to try. It's useful for creating colorized code suitable for printing,
but probably not for republishing on the web. The standalone tool is more
suited to that.
Other Stuff You Should Have
- vbAdvance
- I'm sure that had Microsoft continued the ClassicVB product line, they
ultimately would've included the features offered by this add-in. My
favorite is the ability to compile a native console application. If you
combine this add-in with the drop-in
console support module I
wrote, you can have one of the coolest features of VFred right within the
ClassicVB IDE. But there's lots more to vbAdvance than just this. And now,
after being "off the market" for a couple years, Peter Young has graciously
allowed me to host it here. Please note that this is no longer a commercial
product, but unsupported freeware. Get it!
- MsgHook
- This one is the original; the classic. If you want to step into
subclassing easily, here's how to get going. Quite a number of the samples
provided on this site either use MsgHook directly, or were prototyped with
it. There's just no simpler way to start hooking window messages safely.
- Wheeler
- Here's the best solution I'm aware of to gain full mouse wheel support
in all the Classic VB IDEs (VB6, VB5, and VBA), as well as any other
application windows that lack such support. This one works in both halves of
the IDE code window, and in all NT-class operating systems (both 32- and
64-bit).
- Win32Api.txt
- This file originally shipped with one of the VB4 betas, back in 1994,
and I've been modifying it bits and pieces at a time ever since. I take no
credit, or responsibility, but I do think it's a little more useful than
what comes on the product CDs. Seems a few others do too, given the
downloads. Zipped, it's 164K.
Microsoft Provided
- Visual Basic 5 Runtime
- Msvbvm50.exe is a self-extracting file that installs the latest versions of the Microsoft Visual Basic run-time files that all applications created with Visual Basic 5.0 need in order to run.
The files include fixes that ship
with Visual Basic 5.0 Service Pack 3. For more
information, see Knowledge
Base Article 180071.
- Visual Basic 6 Runtime
- Vbrun60sp5.exe is a self-extracting
executable file that installs versions of the Microsoft Visual Basic
run-time files required by all applications created with Visual Basic 6.0.
The files include the fixes shipped with Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 5.
For more information, see Microsoft's
download page.
- Microsoft Controls and Components for VB5 & VB6
- These files were originally provided on Microsoft.com, but my gut tells
me they'll become harder and harder to find as time goes on.