VISUAL BASIC Programming

This course is based on a traditional procedural approach to programming which requires sequence, repetition and decision making constructs, but in a visual, event driven environment. Most of the ideas for the course have come from the book Programming Principles - An Introduction to Programming in BASIC by Dr Ron Oliver and VISUAL BASIC for Beginners by David Smith.

Please refer to the notes below before using this course.

• Chapter 1 Planning and Writing / VB Script version and example (alx code)
• Chapter 2 Adding comments to your code
• Chapter 3 Using the Scroll Bar / VB script example (alx code)
• Section 4 Repetition - Test First /  VB script example (alx code)
• Section 5 Repetition - Test Last / VB script example (alx code)
• Section 6 Repetition - For Next / VB script example (alx code)
• Section 7 Printing Tables
• Section 8 Conditions - If Then / VB script example (alx code)
• Section 9 Conditions - If Then Else
• Section 10 If Then Else and Case
• Section 11 Random Numbers
• Section12 More Problems (not included)
• Section 13 Using Methods  
• Section 14 Extending the drawing Application
• Section 15 Adding menus

The following problems are presented and demonstrated using VB Script and ActiveX. Refer to my paper that explains how to obtain and use ActiveX control pad to assist in the creation of the code used in these examples.

• Section 16 - Using arrays / includes VB script example (alx code)
• Section 17 - Procedures and parameter passing  / includes VB script example  (alx code)
• Section 18 - Using functions / includes VB script example  (alx code)

Notes:

This course was originally written to be used at Newman College in my Year 10 Computer Software Development class. Visual Basic 4 was the language used to develop it. As many schools do not have sufficient licences for Visual Basic, I have reworked some chapters to enable students to use Visual Basic Script or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to work on the problems in their own time without the need for purchasing Visual Basic. Although a lot of the documentation refers to VB4, there are sufficient example to allow the transition to VB Script to be relatively easy.

Warning: The Visual Basic Script versions presented here require browsers to be set at a low security level to work. To use VB Script, I recommend  that you refer to my paper that explains how to obtain and use ActiveX control pad to assist in the creation of the code used in these examples.

The alx code is the ActivX component. The way this will be delivered will depend on your browser. You may choose to select it and then view the code or you may just save it and view it using Notepad or ActivX control pad.

The program is designed to be taught by a teacher and is not a self-learning course. When I teach the course, I concentrate on Chapters 1 to 9, and then Chapters 13 and 14.  Chapters 16, 17 and 18 have been added to help cater for the algorithm application component of the Western Australian Year 12 Information Systems course.

For Year 12 information systems, I would use chapters 1-10, 16-18.  This could be covered within the 25 hour time frame stipulated in the syllabus document. The only topic not covered is "working with records" as a data structure as VB script does not handle the record data structure.

Other references

http://www.cgvb.com/

http://www.beginners.co.uk/view_course?i=15

http://www.geocities.com/alpha_productions2/tutorials.htm

http://www.vbweb.co.uk/dir/default.asp?id=44&p=6