In Advanced Visual Basic 6, leading Visual Basic expert Matthew Curland demonstrates powerhouse techniques programmers can use to write high-performance, robust, and reusable VB code. Readers learn how to leverage the close relationships between VB, COM, and OLE Automation, extending the envelope of VB's capabilities and building high-quality, object-based systems.
Key topics include how to:
- Control VB array variables explicitly to directly access arbitrary memory locations
- Call pointers to standard, cdecl, and class module functions
- Aggregate complete interface implementations into any VB object
- Override functions on any interface, including those implemented automatically by VB
- Turn any user-defined type into a lightweight COM object
- Minimize memory usage in systems with a large number of objects
- Safely create and manage threads in ActiveX EXEs and DLLs
- Interact with messages to customize windowed and windowless UserControl objects
The web site accompanying this book contains extensive source code samples to enable all techniques without external DLLs. It also provides integrated type library add-ins for creating and editing referenced libraries, modifying binary compatibility files, and customizing the type libraries that VB generated for ActiveX components.
With this compendium of best practices, sophisticated techniques, and valuable utilities, VB programmers will gain a deeper understanding of VB's inner workings and be able to extend its object-oriented capabilities.
About the Author
Matthew Curland is a long-time member of Microsoft's Visual Studio development team. Visual Basic's IntelliSense feature is his most visible contribution. A frequent and popular speaker at VBITS, he also contributes black-belt articles to the leading VB journal, VBPJ, and is the co-author of Object Programming with Visual Basic 4 (Microsoft Press).
