Visual Basic 6 Black Book
(Publisher: The Coriolis Group)
Author(s): Steven Holzner
ISBN: 1576102831
Publication Date: 08/01/98

Setting A Project’s Version Information

Five years from now, a user stumbles across your EXE file, which you’ve conveniently named CDU2000.exe. This makes perfect sense to you—what else would you name the EXE file for a utility named Crop Dusting Utility 2000? However, the user is a little puzzled. How can he get more information directly from the EXE file to know just what CDU2000.exe does? He can do that by interrogating the file’s version information.

A program’s version information includes more than just the version number of the program; it also can include the name of the company that makes the software, general comments to the user, legal copyrights, legal trademarks, the product name, and the product description. All these items are available to the user, and if you’re releasing your software commercially, you should fill these items in. Here’s how you do it:

1.  Open the Project Properties box in Visual Basic now by selecting the Properties item in the Project menu.

2.  Select the Make tab, as shown in Figure 2.19.

Figure 2.19  Setting a project’s version information.

3.  Fill in the information you want, including the program’s version number, product name, and so on.

4.  Create the EXE file, which in our case is CDU2000.exe, using the Make CDU2000.exe item in the File menu.

5.  To look at the version information in CDU2000.exe, find that file in the Windows Explorer and right-click the file, selecting Properties from the pop-up menu that opens. As you can see in Figure 2.20, our version information—including the name of the product—appears in the Properties box.

Figure 2.20  Reading a program’s version information.

Sometimes, version information is all that users have to go on when they encounter your program, so be sure to include it before releasing that product.

Setting An EXE File’s Name And Icon

You’re about to release your software commercially, but you suddenly realize that Project1.exe might not be the best name for your product’s executable file. The stockholders’ meeting is in five minutes—how can you change your EXE file’s name?

To set the EXE file’s name, you just set the project’s name. Here’s how you do it:

1.  Select the Properties item in the Project menu to open the Project Properties box, as shown in Figure 2.21.

Figure 2.21  Setting a project’s name.

2.  Select the General tab in the Project Properties box (if it’s not already selected).

3.  Enter the name of the project you want to use, such as CDU2000 in Figure 2.21.

4.  The project’s name will become the name of the EXE file when you create it with the Make CDU2000.exe item in the File menu.

Now you’ve named your EXE file, but how do you set the program’s icon that will appear in Windows? The program’s icon is just the icon of the startup form, and you can set that by setting that form’s Icon property in the Properties window. If you have a new icon in ICO file format, you can load that icon right into that form by setting the form’s Icon property to the ICO file name.

Displaying The Debug, Edit, And Form Editor Toolbars

By default, Visual Basic displays one toolbar, the standard toolbar. However, there are other toolbars available—the Debug, Edit, and Form Editor toolbars. If you want them, you add those toolbars with the Toolbars submenu of the Visual Basic View menu—just click the new toolbar you want to add. You can also remove one or all toolbars the same way.

The Debug toolbar has the following buttons:

•  Start

•  Break

•  End

•  Toggle Breakpoint

•  Step Into

•  Step Over

•  Step Out

•  Locals Window

•  Immediate Window

•  Watch Window

•  Quick Watch

•  Call Stack

The Edit toolbar includes these buttons:

•  List Properties/Methods

•  List Constants

•  Quick Info

•  Parameter Info

•  Complete Word

•  Indent

•  Outdent

•  Toggle Breakpoint

•  Comment Block

•  Uncomment Block

•  Toggle Bookmark

•  Next Bookmark

•  Previous Bookmark

•  Clear All Bookmarks

The Form Editor toolbar includes these buttons:

•  Bring To Front

•  Send To Back

•  Align

•  Center

•  Width

•  Lock Controls

The Debug, Edit, and Form Editor toolbars appear from left to right in the top toolbar in Figure 2.22.

Figure 2.22  Visual Basic with the Debug, Edit, and Form toolbars.