Your favorite Visual Basic 6.0 tools and tips [closed]

Question

Enable mouse wheel in VB6:

Microsoft:enable the mouse scroll wheel

MZ Tools.

Free. Lots of extra tools for the IDE, like "Favorite Procedures" and "Add error routine to prodedure" and lots more.

http://www.mztools.com/v3/mztools3.aspx

After installing VB6, I always do these customisations on Tools-Options.

• Switch off Auto Syntax Check on the Editor tab. You don't want message boxes when you type a syntax error - you just want the problem line shown in red so you can fix it later.

• Switch on Require Variable Declaration on the Editor tab. Don't think, just do it.

• Switch off Compile On Demand on the General tab. You want to be told about syntax errors immediately when you run your code, not just when the dodgy routine actually gets called.

• EDIT: Prompt to save changes when program starts, on the Environment tab. (Thanks wqw for reminding me in the comments.)

• Set Error Trapping to "Break on unhandled errors" on the General tab. Actually, this is a personal preference - but you should select the setting that suits you. Hopefully you've worked out an error handling strategy for the VB6 program?

• I have an LCD screen, and the default colours don't work very well, so I change them to lighter ones. I'm also using the Consolas font. Makes my VB6 code look twenty-first century anyway :)

It's amazing how many people don't use the IDE buttons for commenting-out and uncommenting blocks of source code. They are on the Edit toolbar and look like this: alt text http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/1949/vb6commentbuttons.gif. Right-click in an unoccupied part of the toolbar area and tick the Edit option to display the toolbar.

I once attended an "Advanced VB6" course where the instructor didn't know about those buttons.

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EDIT: AngryHacker has a way to associate shortcut keys with these buttons to comment and uncomment code blocks at a keystroke.

I can't believe no one has yet posted Bruce McKinney's Hardcore Visual Basic (now free online on mvps.org)! OK it's a book rather than a piece of software, but it expands to a veritable cornucopia of tools and tips.

SmartIndenter takes care of all the auto-indenting. It does one thing and it does it really well. And it's free.

http://www.oaltd.co.uk/Indenter/Default.htm

SmartIndenter http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1392/screencaps1.jpg

The vbAccelerator website. It has so many great examples and free controls with the full source. The site has not been updated in a few years now, but it still keeps running and I still go back to it when working in VB6.