Jeff Nuckolls {Application Platform and Development Tools}

Visual Basic 6.0 IDE goes out of support

In just 1 week from today, on April 8, 2008, the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE will no longer be supported.  If you haven't converted all your apps to .NET shame on you (I mean that in a pure-poor-humor sort of way, in fact it's widely recognized that migrations aren't always straight forward, each migration strategy may differ depending on several variables... prior planning and a knowledgeable consultant is my best advice), but don't freak out... Microsoft will continue to support the VB 6.0 runtime for all existing application in all the next versions of the Windows OS including Windows Server 2008 and Vista.  However; who knows how many years the runtime will be supported, so you might want to start considering a migration plan, if not for supportability concerns, then to take advantage of the performance, security, power of the .NET Framework and the productivity of Visual Studio 2008.  (Click here for more information about Visual Basic 6.0 life-cycle and mainstream support.)

 Technical References for Migration:

• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/ms789186.aspx

Webcast:

• Using the Interop Toolkit to Migrate VB 6.0 applications to .NET

Books:

Upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET w/accompanying CD-ROM

Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005 (Patterns & Practices) {Get-R-Done!}