Essential Training for Visual Basic 6 Developers

On this page you will find a complete series of training videos that give Visual Basic 6 developers the essential skills to start developing on the .NET platform today, whether it is completely new .NET applications, or simply adding .NET functionality to existing Visual Basic 6 applications.

Video Series

Visual Basic Interop
Upgrading a Visual Basic 6 Application
Extending Visual Basic 6 Applications with .NET
Windows Forms Over Data
The Visual Basic .NET IDE

Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework
Visual Basic .NET Data Access
Visual Basic .NET Windows Forms
Visual Basic .NET Web Development
More Visual Basic.NET videos

Visual Basic Interop

This how-to video series is focused on the Interop Forms Toolkit and working with Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 6 together. The Interop Forms Toolkit allows Visual Basic developers to migrate their Visual Basic 6 applications over to .NET using a phased migration strategy. Instead of having to convert the entire VB6 application at once, the toolkit enables .NET Forms and User Controls to run directly in Visual Basic 6 applications so that you can build the pieces that you need over time.

Download the Code: Videos 1–3

You will need: Visual Studio and the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.1 in addition to Visual Basic 6.0

#1 | How Do I: Build Interop Forms?
(11 minutes, 28 seconds)

#2 | How Do I: Build Interop User Controls?
(9 minutes, 3 seconds)

#3 | How Do I: Deploy Hybrid Applications?
(6 minutes, 1 second)

#4 | Intro to the Interop Forms Toolkit
(9 minutes, 14 seconds)

#5 | Intro to the Interop Forms Toolkit, part 2
(17 minutes, 22 seconds)

#6 | How Do I: Call VB.NET components from VB6 applications?
(9 minutes, 48 seconds)

#7 | How Do I: Call VB6 components from VB.NET applications?
(10 minutes, 52 seconds)

#8 | How Do I: Use the .NET Framework Class Library directly from VB6?
(12 minutes, 29 seconds)

Upgrading a Visual Basic 6 Application

This video series is focused on how to upgrade Visual Basic 6 applications to Visual Basic .NET, covering everything from assessing how much time it will take to upgrade an application to running the upgrade wizard.

Presented by John Rauschenberger, CTO Clarity Consulting

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express in addition to Visual Basic 6.0

#1 | How Do I: Prepare a Visual Basic 6 application for upgrade?
(11 minutes, 50 seconds)

#2 | How Do I: Assess how the amount of effort required to upgrade a Visual Basic 6 application?
(8 minutes, 7 seconds)

#3 | How Do I: Use the Visual Basic 6 Upgrade Wizard?
(22 minutes, 1 second)

#4 | How Do I: Move from ADO to ADO.NET?
( 9 minutes, 33 seconds)

Windows Forms over Data Video Series

This how-to video series is dedicated to getting Visual Basic developers productive on areas of data-based Windows Application development on the .NET Framework. You will need: SQL Server or SQL Server Express and Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express.

Download Code and Discuss on Code Gallery

#1 | How Do I: Create a Database?
(17 minutes, 23 seconds)

#2 | How Do I: Connect to a Database?
(10 minutes, 14 seconds)

#3 | How Do I: Create a One-to-Many Data Entry Form?
(5 minutes, 40 seconds)

#4 | How Do I: Create a Search Form?
(5 minutes, 30 seconds)

#5 | How Do I: Create Lookup Lists?
(9 minutes, 48 seconds)

#6 | How Do I: Filter Data on the Client?
(7 minutes, 52 seconds)

#7 | How Do I: Use Auto-Complete?
(7 minutes, 50 seconds)

#8 | How Do I: Format Data in Controls?
(12 minutes, 30 seconds)

#9 | How Do I: Add Validation?
(8 minutes, 56 seconds)

#10 | How Do I: Work with Local Data?
(5 minutes, 31 seconds)

#11 | How Do I: Modify the Database?
(3 minutes, 6 seconds)

#12 | How Do I: Deploy Local Data?
(8 minutes, 17 seconds)

#13 | How Do I: Print Forms?
(4 minutes, 30 seconds)

#14 | How Do I: Build Reports?
(7 minutes, 22 seconds)

#15 | How Do I: Understand Data?
(24 minutes, 8 seconds)

#16 | How Do I: Update Related Tables?
(19 minutes, 51 seconds)

#17 | How Do I: Build Reports Against Remote Data?
(18 minutes, 14 seconds)

#18 | How Do I: Modify Connection Strings at Runtime?
(12 minutes, 11 seconds)

#19 | How Do I: Get Started with the DataGridView?
(13 minutes, 19 seconds)

#20 | How Do I: Update Related Tables?
(13 minutes, 43 seconds)

#21 | How Do I: Use DataSets in an N-Tier Application?
(24 minutes, 9 seconds)

#22 | How Do I: Create an Occasionally Connected Application?
(9 minutes, 22 seconds)

#23 | How Do I: Create and Consume a Windows Communication Foundation Service?
(16 minutes, 27 seconds)

#24 | How Do I: Use the DataRepeater Control?
(8 minutes, 58 seconds)

#25 | How Do I:Create a report from a database?
(10 minutes, 12 seconds)

#26 | How Do I:Create a report from a business object?
(11 minutes, 38 seconds)

The Visual Basic .NET IDE

This how-to video series provides an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences between the Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET development environments.

Presented by Arian Kulp, Aeshen LLC

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express

#1 | VB6 and VB.NET: The IDEs aren't as different as you may think
(14 minutes, 48 seconds)

#2 | VB6 and VB.NET: What's new in the IDE
(15 minutes, 44 seconds)

#3 | Coding and Debugging with Visual Basic .NET
(15 minutes, 7 seconds)

#4 | Speeding Visual Basic development with Code Snippets
(12 minutes, 10 seconds)

Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework

This how-to video series is focused on familiarizing Visual Basic 6 developers with some of concepts involved in .NET development, including a COM-oriented introduction to object-oriented programming, an detailed discussion of the similarities and differences between Visual Basic 6 and .NET datatypes, and some highlights of new functionality that .NET brings to Visual Basic development.

Presented by Arian Kulp, Aeshen LLC

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express

#1 | Intro to Classes Objects, and Object-oriented programming
(35 minutes, 57 seconds)

#2 | Working with variables and new datatypes in Visual Basic .NET
(16 minutes, 42 seconds)

#3 | What the .NET Framework adds to Visual Basic development
(25 minutes, 18 seconds)

Visual Basic .NET Data Access

This how-to video series is focused on more advanced data binding techniques using object binding in Visual Basic .NET. The series walks through creating business objects and how to associate them in one-to-many relationships, how to provide searching capabilities and how to enable sorting.

Presented by Brian Randell, MCW Technologies

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express

#1 | Intro to Data Access with Visual Basic .NET
(13 minutes, 58 seconds)

#2 | Connected data: Applying your ADO skills to ADO.NET
(5 minutes, 41 seconds)

#3 | Disconnected data: Moving beyond ADO to use the new DataSet object
(16 minutes, 25 seconds)

#4 | Persisting changes to your database with ADO.NET
(7 minutes, 3 seconds)

Visual Basic .NET Windows Forms

The video series covers everything you need to know to build a Windows-based, forms-over-data application, from an overview of the controls that come with the .NET Framework, to building custom controls, to Click-Once deployment and updates.

Presented by Brian Randell, MCW Technologies

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Basic Express

#1 | Building rich Windows applications with Visual Basic .NET
(7 minutes, 34 seconds)

#2 | Creating custom controls with Visual Basic .NET
(24 minutes, 38 seconds)

#3 | Integrating data into Windows Forms applications
(17 minutes, 18 seconds)

#4 | Deploying a Windows Application with Click Once
(8 minutes, 34 seconds)

#1 | How Do I: Enable Logging in My Applications?
(25 minutes, 45 seconds)

#2 | How Do I: Enable Tracing in My Applications?
(27 minutes, 30 seconds)

#3 | How Do I: Send Log Files Through E-mail?
(21 minutes, 29 seconds)

#4 | How Do I: Use a Web Service in My Applications?
(11 minutes, 51 seconds)

#5 | How Do I: Deploy Applications with ClickOnce?
(10 minutes, 54 seconds)

#6 | How Do I: Use the ClickOnce Deployment API to Update My App?
(12 minutes, 40 seconds)

#7 | How Do I: Email Unhandled Exceptions?
(25 minutes, 20 seconds)

#8 | How Do I: Notify one form that data in another form has changed?
(05 minutes, 24 seconds)

#9 | How Do I: Exchange data between two forms in an application?
(09 minutes, 23 seconds)

Visual Basic .NET Web Development

This how-to video series is focused on web development with Visual Basic .NET. Learn how to build an ASP.NET application and web services with many of the same techniques you mastered with Visual Basic 6. Check out ASP.NET Videos for more video tutorials.

Presented by Brian Randell, MCW Technologies

You will need: Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer Express

#1 | Building ASP.NET applications with Visual Basic .NET
(23 minutes, 32 seconds)

#2 | Using web services with Visual Basic .NET
(12 minutes, 30 seconds)