vb2005 vs. vb.net

[mathprof]

#1 I'm using VB6 now. What would be the next (latest) upgrade to .net?

I'm confused with visual studio.net, visual basic 2005, etc.

Can anyone sort and distinguish between these (and other products) that I may be interested in to continue programming in the latest version of Visual Basic?

Is there an upgrade coming out soon?

#2 I just attended an MS webcast using vb6 with interop forms. If I want to continue using vb6 with interop forms which new software should I look at?

[jmcilhinney]

Any thing after VB6 is .NET. The first round of products was VB.NET 2002 and Visual Studio .NET 2002, which targeted version 1.0 of the .NET Framework. The ".NET" suffix was used to distinguish these products from all the previous versions of VB and Visual Studio that did not target the .NET platform. Note that the term "C#.NET" was never officially used because there was no pre-.NET version of C# to distinguish it from.

The next round of products included VB.NET 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. The most recent round of products includes VB 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. The ".NET" prefix has now been droped because it is Microsoft's position that .NET is now the norm and it is the non-.NET products that should be distinguished.

The next version of VS is still in CTP so its release is some time off. There are extensions available for VS 2005 that allow you to target .NET 3.0 in the mean time.

[RobDog888]

And to add to that, Visual Studio (VS) is a suite of applications, one of which is Visual Basic. So when referencing VS.NET is to reference the entire collection of .NET apps as opposed to VS 6.0.

[mathprof]

Thanks to both of you. That clears a lot up.

[RobDog888]

Np, we are glad to help

Btw, since you are new I would like to suggest Resolving your thread so other members will know its solved. You can do it from the Threads Tools menu located at the top right when viewing a thread.