Book excerpt: This information-packed STEP BY STEP course—based on the best-selling first edition—is the easiest, fastest way to teach yourself how to write 32-bit Microsoft® Windows®–based programs with Visual Basic®. Work through every lesson to complete the full course, or do just the lessons you want to learn exactly the skills you need. Either way, you receive professional Visual Basic 6.0 training at your own pace, with real-world examples and practice files to help you master core programming skills. Topics covered include: Getting Started with Visual Basic: Opening and running a Visual Basic program, writing your first program, and working with controls, menus, and dialog boxes Programming fundamentals: Working with Visual Basic variables and operators and using decision structures, loops, and timers Creating the perfect user interface: Working with forms, printers, and error handlers and adding artwork and special effects Managing corporate data: Using modules and procedures, exploring text files and processing strings, managing Microsoft Access databases, and connecting to Microsoft Office Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition tools and techniques: Word processing with the Rich TextBox control, displaying progress and status information, using the Multimedia MCI control, and using the Windows API Web programming fundamentals: Downloading files with the Internet Transfer control, displaying HTML documents with Internet Explorer, designing Dynamic HTML (DHTML) pages, and adding Toolbox elements and ActiveX® Controls to DHTML pages Advanced database programming: Managing data with the FlexGrid control and exploring ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) Upgrade notes: What’s new and improved in Visual Basic .NET and how to plan an upgrade