What is Visual Basic?

Visual Basic (the program) is a compiler for the BASIC language. A compiler takes instructions and converts (or compiles) them into "machine instructions" that the computer can understand without having to go through Visual Basic.

After you've designed a program, you can tell Visual Basic to compile and run the program, so you can see how it works. The program must be compiled before you can run it.

The Visual Basic environment

When you start Visual Basic, you should have a fairly standard setup on your screen. On the left is your Toolbox, which holds all of your controls (controls are things on a window; buttons, input boxes, and scroll bars are all controls). On the right is a divided area: the top half displays your Project Outline, with all the windows and objects in your project; and the bottom half (the Properties Window) displays the properties for the currently selected control. In the middle is a blank window called a form.

If you rest your mouse on top of a control in the Toolbox, a ToolTip will appear, showing you the name of a control. If you click once on a control, that will select it. If you then click and drag anywhere on the form, then release the mouse button, a control of the type you selected will be placed on the form. This is how you'll create all of your programs, by placing controls on your form.

You can click on any of the controls that are on your form, thereby selecting them. When you select a control, its properties appear in the lower-right hand corner of the window. You can then modify the properties of that control.

Running your application

Once you've created a program, you can run hit by hitting the [F5] key or clicking toolbar button that looks like the Play button on a VCR (it looks like a triangle, pointing to the right). Visual Basic will then compile your program and run it for you, and you can test it to make sure it does what you expect it to.