Microsoft Introduces Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 28, 1996 — Today at the Microsoft® Site Builder Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced the Visual Basic® programming system version 5.0, Control Creation Edition. Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition, a specialized version of the world’s most popular rapid application development tool, was developed to enable the easy creation of ActiveX
™
Controls. This new version of the Visual Basic programming system will enable millions of developers to build ActiveX Controls rapidly. ActiveX Controls are a key element of the Active Platform, Microsoft’s recommended platform for Internet development. All attendees of the Site Builder Conference and the upcoming Microsoft Professional Developers Conference will receive a free beta version of the product. The beta can also be downloaded immediately at no charge from http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/ .

Ease of Use Opens Up Web Development

ActiveX Controls are compact, reusable software components that can be integrated into a large range of products, including browsers, productivity suites and development tools.

“Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition is great news for the entire development community. It is by far the easiest way to create Active components for the Web, significantly reducing complexity and time spent in creating reusable components,”
said Bob Muglia, vice president, developer tools at Microsoft.
“Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation will cause a tidal wave of ActiveX Controls to hit the Internet.”

“We are very excited about this new edition of Visual Basic. This will shorten the time it takes us to create ActiveX Controls by a factor of ten,”
said Daniel Mezick, president of New Technology Solutions Inc., a Visual Basic training provider.
“ActiveX Controls allow us to componentize our software development, making it easier to package components for reuse in Internet and traditional client/server projects alike. Development in both areas is now much more cost-effective.”

Specialized Functionality

Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition allows developers to build, test, compile and reuse ActiveX Controls. Controls created with Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition can be included in any application that supports ActiveX Controls, including Microsoft Internet Explorer , Microsoft Office 97, Visual Basic 4.0, theVisual C++ development system, the Visual FoxPro
™
database system, Delphi, Netscape Navigator (using plug-ins), and any vendor application that has licensed Visual Basic 5.0, Applications Edition. Developers can build ActiveX Controls from scratch or take advantage of the thousands of extensible commercial ActiveX components.

Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition includes the new intelligent code editor, forms engine and interactive debugger in Visual Basic 5.0, but does not include some of the functionality found in the retail editions of Visual Basic , such as the Jet database engine, report writing, integration with the Visual SourceSafe
™
version control system and other features not required for control creation. As a result, the version available for downloading from the Web is a lean 7 MB. While the Control Creation Edition will provide support for building ActiveX Controls, it cannot be used to develop standalone applications.

Growing Industry for ActiveX Controls

Hundreds of ISVs currently market more than 2,000 ActiveX Controls. Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition will enable the continued growth of this rapidly developing market by dramatically increasing the number of potential controls vendors, while reducing their cost of development, shrinking time to market and making it easier to extend and aggregate controls into higher-level subassemblies.

“The introduction of Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition is going to spark a tremendous boom in the component industry,”
said Bob Wolf, president of Sheridan Software Systems Inc., a leading ActiveX Controls vendor.
“Corporations will always need complex ActiveX Controls for sophisticated applications now they can customize these third-party controls and aggregate them with controls they create themselves with Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition to create function-specific controls. This gives even greater value to our products.”

Pricing and Availability

Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition will be available as a standalone product and integrated into the Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions of Visual Basic 5.0 when they are released. The beta and final versions of Visual Basic 5.0, Control Creation Edition will be available for downloading at no charge from the Microsoft Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/ (connect-time charges may apply). Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.

Microsoft, Visual Basic, ActiveX, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro and Visual SourceSafe are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

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