Re: General question about upgrade path
From: MikeD (nobody_at_nowhere.edu)
Date: 02/28/05
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Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 23:07:12 -0500
"Ralph" <msnews.20.nt_consulting32@spamgourmet.com> wrote in message
news:OgFlL%23THFHA.3108@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>
> You said it wasn't worth the hassle, yet you can't seem to run VB5 on XP
at
> home? IMHO, it seems a simple case of "Well, Duh!" and upgrading to VB6.
I
> never had good luck with VB5 it seemed just a stop-gap between VB4 and
VB6.
> However, I am alone in that opinion. There are many classic VBers that
swear
> by it - offering the opinion that VB6 didn't bring anything new to the
> table, except a new round of troublesome controls. <g>
I suppose I'd be one of those people. If you've got VB5 and it's doing well
for you, I don't see the sense in upgrading to VB6. To my knowledge, the
only controls VB6 really updates are the Windows Common Controls OCXs...and
for use under WinXP, you're really better off using the VB5 versions of them
even if you have VB6. That's because the VB5 versions are linked to
COMCTL32.DLL whereas the VB6 versions are not (this is actually kind of a
blessing and a curse). It boils down to the fact that there is NOTHING you
can write with VB6 that you can't write with VB5. VB6 can just make some
things easier to write (particularly code involving strings, arrays, and
UDTs). Most people are going to tell you that the differences between VB4
(and even limiting that to just the 32 bit version) and VB5 are greater than
the differences between VB5 and VB6. IOW, upgrading from VB4 to either VB5
or VB6 is warranted (but if you're going to upgrade from VB4, it may as well
be to VB6), but upgrading from VB5 to VB6 can be questionable. Aside from
any difference in features between VB4 and VB5 (or VB6), VB4 is extremely
buggy. That alone is merit to upgrade.
>
> But frankly I don't think VB5 is the real problem with DAO and XP - more
> likely it is the drivers, Jet pack, etc. Perhaps you need to upgrade
> DAO/Jet?
I agree 100% with that.
>
> But going from a 'newer' OS to a 'older' OS
> is usually easier, than vice versa. It is simply a matter of it being
easier
> to make the 'newer' more backward compatible than making the 'older' more
> future compatible. In general, developing on XP and migrating to Win2k
> shouldn't be as bad as going the other way.
Whoah! I don't agree at all with that. You're saying it's easier to
anticipate forward compatibility than it is to maintain backwards
compatibility? Perhaps you need to browse older posts or search google.com
and find the MANY posts that strongly recommend you develop and compile
using the oldest version of Windows that you need to support. I'm
dumbfounded by your statement. I can't believe you even made that
statement. Just for grins and giggles, let's say you need to perform a task
that WinXP provides an API function to do, but no older version of Windows
does. You're screwed if you use it and your app is run under a previous
version of Windows. If you use that API function, your app is ONLY going to
work in WinXP or later. OTOH, you might very well be able to accomplish the
same task under Win2000 (or even Win9x), but using other methods that also
work under WinXP. Sorry, but I think you're completely off the mark in
suggesting that it's better to develop under a later version of Windows if
you need to support a previous version. Now if you want to target your app
to WinXP (or later) only, that's your call. I don't agree with that either,
as I think it's pretty much mandatory to still support Win2000 and even
Win98/ME (unless, of course, you're developing for a specific client and
know for a fact that all PCs will be a certain version of Windows).
-- Mike Microsoft MVP Visual Basic
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