Web Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users

Visual Basic 6.0 supports Web programming directly; in Visual Basic 2008, Web programming is done using Visual Web Developer and the Visual Basic language.

Conceptual Differences

Visual Basic 6.0 includes several features that support programming for the Web: Internet Information Services (IIS) applications (Web classes), DHTML applications, ActiveX documents, and ActiveX controls that can be downloaded to Web pages.

In Visual Basic 2008, Web programming is no longer directly supported. Instead, you can use Visual Web Developer and the Visual Basic language to create ASP.NET Web sites, ASP.NET Web services, and much more. You can create Web controls in Visual Basic 2008 that can be used in Visual Web Developer, and you can consume ASP.NET Web services from a Visual Basic 2008 application or component.

ASP and ASP.NET

In Visual Basic 6.0, IIS (Internet Information Services) applications use the Active Server Pages (ASP) model to create applications that run on IIS. ASP.NET technology allows you to create a Web site using Web Forms pages; ASP.NET Web-site applications are also hosted on IIS.

DHTML Applications

Visual Basic 6.0 DHTML applications use the Dynamic HTML object model and Visual Basic code to create applications that can respond to actions performed by the user in a browser. Visual Web Developer Web Forms expand upon the DHTML model, providing richer dynamic user-interface capabilities as well as client-side validation.

ActiveX Documents and Controls

Visual Basic 6.0 ActiveX documents are not supported in Visual Basic 2008. You can still interoperate with ActiveX documents from your Visual Web Developer Web-site applications, but development should be maintained in Visual Basic 6.0.

Visual Basic 2008 also allows you to create ActiveX controls that can be downloaded to Web pages, or to use existing ActiveX controls in your Visual Basic 2008 applications.

See Also

Concepts

Working with Both Visual Basic 6.0 and the Current Version of Visual Basic

Other Resources

Visual Web Developer

Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users

Web Namespaces in Visual Studio

Programming the Web with Web Services