Developing Visual Basic Add-ins [Paperback]

Steven Roman PhD (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 1999

Most developers can think of dozens of ways in which they'd like to modify Visual Basic's integrated development environment (or IDE) in order to work more productively. These enhancements can range from simple items (like determining the version of Visual Basic for Applications used by the IDE, or clearing the Immediate window) to much more involved ones (like developing a utility that allows the tab order of the individual controls on a form to be set easily).

Just as the major Microsoft Office applications expose their functionality through their object models, Visual Basic's development environment also exposes its functionality through the Visual Basic Extensibility Model. Unfortunately, though, the model is poorly documented and poorly understood. And most programmers simply don't have the time to sift through the documentation and experiment using trial and error to extend the IDE. Developing Visual Basic Add-ins addresses this lack of adequate documentation by showing how to develop add-ins for Visual Basic Versions 5.0 and 6.0 and by providing numerous coding examples of simple but useful add-ins.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, Add-in Basics, discusses the mechanics of add-in creation. This includes such topics as:

• Retrieving a reference to the VB IDE
• Registering an add-in
• Activating an add-in
• Making an add-in's functionality accessible through a menu option or toolbar button

Developing an add-in requires creativity, since it requires a programmer to both identify a shortcoming of the IDE and implement some means of enhancing it. The second part of the book, The Extensibility Model, prepares you for this creative part of add-in development by focusing on the VB IDE Extensibility Model. Individual chapters provide in-depth coverage of specific categories of objects, such as user interface objects, project-related objects, and form and control objects.

With Developing Visual Basic Add-ins, you can finally make all of the enhancements to the VB IDE that will allow you to program more effectively.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steven Roman, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. His previous books with O'Reilly include "Access Database Design and Programming", "Writing Excel Macros with VBA", and "Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic".

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565925270
• ISBN-13: 978-1565925274
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #677,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Didn't get much out of it, January 29, 2000

By 

Jeffrey C. Roux (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Developing Visual Basic Add-ins (Paperback)

I tried to write an add-in. I got it working, but as far as getting it to really do what I wanted (something similar to NuMega DevPartner which can act on particular files in the project), this book didn't get me there. I'm not sure if the author has built any really useful add-ins either. There's certainly a market for a good book on it, but this isn't it. FWIW, I have the same author's book on programming Word, and I didn't find that any more useful than the online documentation, so perhaps this author just needs to get more into the material and then share what he learns. This book is probably too short, and perhaps the space to properly expound on the material was limited by the publisher.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Intro, waiting for Part 2 ..... I guess., February 24, 2000

By 

Phil Burns (Utah, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Visual Basic Add-ins (Paperback)

With great excitement I purchased this book, when thumbing through it in the store it looked really promising. It truly does give alot more information than MS does, but it still leaves you confused a bit. The object models are shrugged off to very little commentary and figuring out the complexities of manipulating objects within a large program is not even touched. I had hoped that this topic had finally gotten serious consideration, it appears that this was only meant to be an intro book. I would highly recommend it if you only want to know what an add-in is, but if you want to do some serious programming with addins, you'll need alot more than this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK book, but somewhat incomplete, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Developing Visual Basic Add-ins (Paperback)

I expected more from this book. The author notes (correctly) that the IDE Extensibility model is poorly documented by Microsoft. That's the reason that I bought this book, but it too fails in completely documenting the object model. After reading this book from cover to cover, I got the feeling that this book was thrown together quickly just to get it out. Some of it just seems like filler. For example, there's a chapter on Object Models. Those of us writing add-ins should know this by now. It was all VERY basic stuff. Many of his examples (expecially in the menus section) give examples that go against the MS Word menus. Why? We're writing this stuff for the VB IDE! Unfortunatly, this is about the only book I've found on writing add-ins. Maybe another one will surface soon.