Developing Visual Basic Add-ins

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins The VB IDE Extensibility Model

By Steven Roman, Ph.D.
January 1900
Pages: 183
ISBN 10: 1-56592-527-0 | ISBN 13: 9781565925274
(Average of 0 Customer Reviews)

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Book description

A tutorial and reference guide in one, this short book covers all the basics of creating customized VB add-ins to extend the IDE, allowing developers to work more productively with Visual Basic. Readers with even a modest acquaintance with VB will be developing add-ins in no time. Includes numerous simple code examples.
Full Description

Most developers can think of dozens of ways in which they'd like to modify Visual Basic's integrated development environment (or IDE) in order to work more productively. These enhancements can range from simple items (like determining the version of Visual Basic for Applications used by the IDE, or clearing the Immediate window) to much more involved ones (like developing a utility that allows the tab order of the individual controls on a form to be set easily). Just as the major Microsoft Office applications expose their functionality through their object models, Visual Basic's development environment also exposes its functionality through the Visual Basic Extensibility Model. Unfortunately, though, the model is poorly documented and poorly understood. And most programmers simply don't have the time to sift through the documentation and experiment using trial and error to extend the IDE. Developing Visual Basic Add-ins addresses this lack of adequate documentation by showing how to develop add-ins for Visual Basic Versions 5.0 and 6.0 and by providing numerous coding examples of simple but useful add-ins. The book is divided into two parts. The first part, Add-in Basics, discusses the mechanics of add-in creation. This includes such topics as:

Retrieving a reference to the VB IDE
Registering an add-in
Activating an add-in
Making an add-in's functionality accessible through a menu option or toolbar button

Developing an add-in requires creativity, since it requires a programmer to both identify a shortcoming of the IDE and implement some means of enhancing it. The second part of the book, The Extensibility Model, prepares you for this creative part of add-in development by focusing on the VB IDE Extensibility Model. Individual chapters provide in-depth coverage of specific categories of objects, such as user interface objects, project-related objects, and form and control objects. With Developing Visual Basic Add-ins, you can finally make all of the enhancements to the VB IDE that will allow you to program more effectively.

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Cover | Table of Contents | Index | Sample Chapter | Colophon

Book details

First Edition: January 1900
ISBN: 1-56592-527-0
Pages: 183
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 0 Reviews)

Featured customer reviews

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins Review, March 29 2000
Submitted by Gregory Silvano   [Respond | View]

Great book! I used it extensively while creating the Add-In for CodeHound.com. This book is really the only reference you'll find outside the (meager) VB help files for creating a VB Add-In.

Mistakes in an Add-In come at a heavy cost - the stability of the users' development environment. If you're going to create an Add-In for release to the general public, you definitely want to read all the references you can get your hands on.

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins Review, November 27 1999
Submitted by Kees van Gennip   [Respond | View]

It took me one year to find this book. I managed to find out, how VBE worked and use it for standardize and document coding.
With the help of this book I developed my application further. And only now I understand why some things had to be done, to get it working.

Great book.

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins Review, August 26 1999
Submitted by David Laub   [Respond | View]

Fabulous book! I was thinking of creating a grep like utility for finding MS Office macros, and had absolutely no idea where to begin. After buying this book, my work is almost done!

Read all reviews

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins Review, April 25 1999
Submitted by Jim Skipper [Respond | View]

This is the best book on the market for writing add-ins.
Every aspect is clearly and carefully explained in detail.
I have not found a clearer explanation of the VB IDE object model.
This book has given me many great ideas for development.

Media reviews

Developing Visual Basic Add-ins by Steven Roman . . .will probably be of [more] immediate use to a lot of programmers. All major Windows tools expose large parts of their functionality through a COM interface. This allows developers to call on such things as Microsoft Word's spelling checker, or Excel's calculation engine, from applications written in C++, Visual Basic, or even Perl. It also allows you to add functionality to those tools, and in particular to extend Microsoft Developer Studio by adding your own buttons, toolbars, and windows to it.

Microsoft's own descriptions of how to do this are contradictory and incomplete, but that's where Roman's book comes in. After a short introduction, Roman dives into the specifics: what a basic add-in has to provide, how it can register itself, how to add menus, how to handle events, and so on. Marginal flags show which pieces of information are VB5 or VB6 specific, and this information on its own almost justifies the cost of the book. Finally, at 171 pages (not counting a few pages of advertising at the back), the book has the almost unique property among Visual Basic books of being small enough to hold comfortably in one hand... --Review by Gregory V. Wilson Copyright (C) Dr. Dobb's Journal, June, 1999

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