For many years, Microsoft® Visual Basic® was the tool of choice for a large number of developers, and though Visual Basic 6 is now more than 10 years old and has largely been replaced by Visual Basic .NET and subsequent versions, there are still billions of lines of Visual Basic 6 in use around the world. Many companies rely on these applications but also want to take advantage of features offered by the newer .NET technologies. Here are some resources to help you bridge the gap between Visual Basic 6 and .NET.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system offers powerful tools for day-to-day work around the office, but did you know that it also provides a robust platform for developing your own custom tools? You can build your own custom ribbons, connect to remote data sources, construct documents on the fly, and work with your e-mail programmatically. Instead of building applications that replicate something that Office applications already do, why not just extend the Office application of your choice to do what you need? Here is some information to get you started.

Sometimes the requirements for a Windows client application go beyond what comes out-of-the-box with traditional Windows Forms technology. If you need to build customized user interfaces that require different types of media, the ability to be skinned, or custom 'owner draw' capabilities, Windows Presentation Foundation can make complex tasks a lot easier. Here's how to get started.