** Visual Basic 6.1 (Unofficial Release) **

May 2014
Happy birthday to the programming language BASIC. Many dialects appeared during the 50 years that passed. It's still loved to this day. Microsoft did good business with BASIC. They supplied BASIC for home computers in the '80s, QuickBASIC for MS-DOS followed some years later and finally Visual Basic for Windows appeared in the '90s.

The 50th birthday is a good occasion to make the Visual Basic 6 IDE future proof. It's still used by many programmers for its rapid and easy development features. VB.NET was never seen as a real successor to VB6 because it has very little in common with VB6 or BASIC for that matter. VB.NET is more like another variant of Java, just like C# is. 

VB6 is still alive and kicking despite many attempts of Microsoft to kill it. No one understands why they would want that because it was their most succesfull language ever AND they still supply and support VBA with MS Office 2013. Sadly, they did the same to Visual FoxPro in 2005...

Here it is... Visual Basic 6.1! It's a silent MSI setup that's supported on Windows XP, 7, 8, ... 32 or 64 bit.

If you don't know VB yet or you have to refresh your knowledge... this site has some good lessons, both for beginner and advanced users.
Beginner:  
http://visualbasic.freetutes.com/learn-vb6/
Advanced: 
http://visualbasic.freetutes.com/learn-vb6-advanced/

The contents of this birthday present are:
-Microsoft Visual Basic 6
-Service Pack 6
-Security Update KB2708437
-Visual theme and DPI support
-Mouse Wheel support
-Consolas code font
-New Common Controls (VBCCR10.OCX, http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?698563-CommonControls-(Replacement-of-the-MS-common-controls)/page8)
-Anchor Control to dynamically position controls based on anchors to the top, right, bottom and left of the form (http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=75387&lngWId=1)
-Tabbed code editor addin (CodeHelp, http://www.planetsourcecode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=62468&lngWId=1)
-Wheeler addin to enable the scrollwheel (http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=75398&lngWId=1)
-CodeView addin to view function overview in current module (http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=75397&lngWId=1)
-MZTools3 addin (http://www.mztools.com/v3/mztools3.aspx)
-vbAdvance3 addin (http://vb.mvps.org/tools/vbAdvance/)
-Win32 API addin (http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?277596-API-Add-In-for-Visual-Basic)
-VB6 MSDN Library (latest VB6 help files)
-mt.exe (in the Common folder) to embed .manifest files into .exe files (Windows SDK)
-ManifestCreator.exe (http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?606736-VB6-XP-Vista-Win7-Manifest-Creator)
-Make My Manifest xcopy deployment tool (http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com)
-Enigma Virtual Box (free application virtualization, http://enigmaprotector.com)

To install:
VB6WithSP6.msi
VB61FeaturePack.msi
MSDNVB.msi

After installation of VB6.1 you should disable the Desktop Composition feature for VB6.exe (right click/properties/compatibility/disable desktop composition). This is necessary to make the visual designer fast and snappy.

Should you dislike an addin... easy enough to disable it with the add-in manager.

Visual Basic 6.1 says Hello World! Go update your old projects and release brand new software created with the one and only Visual Basic!

Dr. Watson

*You should have a valid license or usage rights for MS Visual Basic 6 to use this product ;)