A number ISVs I've been talking to as participants in the Windows Vista early-adoption programs have asked questions on the support of legacy Visual Basic 6 applications on Windows Vista.

In this DevSource article "Microsoft's Upcoming Vista To Support Legacy VB6 Apps" Jay Roxe doens't fully answer the question "Will Microsoft's forthcoming Vista OS support legacy applications written in VB6 (Visual Basic 6)?", but he says that Microsoft will extend mainstream support for the VB6 runtime at the time Vista will be shipping. Other take-aways from the article:

• the VB6 runtime will ship with Vista
• in general VB6 applications will work on Windows Vista and they will get AppCompat testing
• the VB6 IDE will not take advantage of new Vista features or behavior but it will run on Windows Vista
• Will the VB6 runtime be shipped with Windows XP and Server 2003 until the end of life of these products

Microsoft is currently readying a white paper about VB6 support in the next edition of Windows. More in-detail answers to the support question will be available in about a month from now.

Below a list of some very useful resources on Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic 2005:

• VBRun Resource Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/
• Visual Basic 6 Resources: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/greatesthits/default.aspx
• VBFusion: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/vbfusion/default.aspx
• Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/VBRun/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/VB6ToVBNetUpgrade.asp
• User Interface Controls in Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/UIConVB6and05.asp
• Visual Basic 6.0 Code Advisor: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/previous/2003/downloads/CodeAdvisor/