Dll

[Soniya]

Hi I am new to Visual Basic and learning ......i wish to learn
1)what DLL's are and how to create them..........?
2)About VB and Win API......?

Any suggestions about some good tutorials online.....

I loved the Tutorial by Karl Moore very informative for novices like me........

[TheBao]

http://www.devdos.com/vb/page/lesson1.shtml
http://www.astentech.com/tutorials/VB3.html

[Soniya]

Thankx TheBao for your reply i am going thru the info in both the web-sites......

[Kumars]

You know VC++

[Soniya]

No Kumars i donot know VC++





Soniya

[Kumars]

Hi

In VB. Dlls implementation are changed. Its different in VB.NET

Which one you want to know or both

email id?


rs
kumars

[Soniya]

Hi Kumars...i am learning only VB ver 6 i am not into VB.net....so DLL query was relating to VB6


Soniya

[Kumars]

Hi Soniya,

Thats fine. I Hope i can help you ..

IF u feel free, please give your email Id...and let us be the good email friends

or send pm

kumars

[yrwyddfa]

A DLL (historical)

In the days of old when knights were bold . . .

When you created an application all of the source code would need to compiled together. Now, although you could have external files containing source code, you would still need to compile them all in the one 'EXE' Statically Linked.

This meant reuse etc became difficult, although generic source files flew around all over the place.

So MS, in their infinite wisdom decided that they would create an operating system that would allow external compiled exe's to be dynamically linked to another exe [all sorts of stuff about process, threads, shared memory etc . . .]

The DLL is what they came up with hence Dynamic Linked Library.

It was, and is a superb idea.

[$CCF$]

Hi,

You may not know it, but that's a far reaching question! A bit like "what is the nature of the universe?"

If you want to learn VB, quickly and easily you should probably get a really good newbie's book like "An Introduction to Programming with Visual Basic 6.0" by David I. Schneider.

Other ways you can pick up VB quickly are to get books like Sams' "Pure Visual Basic 6" and Sams' "Teach yourself Visual Basic in 10 minutes". (You can't learn VB in 10 minutes, that's just the length of the sample exercises).

Many people will castigate me for recommending the "Visual Basic in 10 minutes" but often it helps to learn how to use each of the basic controls before you try and write a small application that uses a range of controls you know little about. Teaching you the basics of the common controls is what all this book is about and its cheap and a lightweight read. Confidence with using the most common controls extend your confidence to build small applications where you will effectively make data interact between compnents.

Now, a DLL... The simple explanation is that a DLL is a file to store chunks of program code that are re-usable. Different executable programs can then re-use the code in the DLL file by getting a copy of it when they need to use something it contains. Think of a DLL as the foundation for a house - it's your underlying structure on which to build. When you wish to build your house, you will need to know which foundations your particular house should sit on - often you will have to make your own DLLs.

In terms of writing a DLL, VB makes it simple. You can write a program like normal, but in your Project Properties dialog, you change the "Compile as Standard EXE" to "Compile as ActiveX DLL" - then when you build your program it will be a DLL. However, you need to read more about DLLs before you rush off and do this. You should learn a little about "classes" and "objects" because these are code building blocks that get put into DLLs in the real world and make DLL programming useful.

Good luck!

$CCF$