Not so for the VB 6 IDE (integrated
development environment), for which extended support will be retired in April of 2008).
What does this mean for you? If you are currently using any ActiveX components, your
applications should work just as they do now. The problem with VB 6 support going away as
I see it is that VBA, being a subset of VB, has similar syntax. It??™s easy enough to create procedures
and compile your code in classic VB if you??™re a VBA programmer.
If you??™re moving your Microsoft development tools to Windows Vista, you will not have
this option available to you. Given that there are still plenty of ActiveX components available
(both free and for pay), and since you can still create your own if you are not moving to Vista
right away, we??™ll take a short look at incorporating them into your Excel projects.
Are There Any Benefits?
Absolutely. Consider that the code you create in VBA is very similar to VB code. How can one
be more beneficial than the other? There are two major reasons:
Better performance: Code wrapped in an ActiveX DLL is compiled code. This runs much
faster than interpreted VBA code.
Greater security: Your VBA code is not very secure in the VBE. Anyone who knows how to
press Alt+F11 can see and modify your code. Code in a compiled VB component cannot
be seen by users or any other interested party.
Custom Functionality with ActiveX
Way back in Chapter 2, we looked at various methods of bringing data into your Excel projects.
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