Visual Basic Projects

A typical VB application might consist of more than one forms, each of which may have multiple controls. In VB, the information about each form (it's own properties as well as those of the controls that are on the form) is saved into it's own file. In fact, there are several types of files that VB creates (we'll cover them all later in the tutorial).

VB also saves a "project" file, which contains the list of files, which VB loads when the "project" is loaded. The project file includes other information, such as the filenames of controls, which are not intrinsic to VB (they exist as separate files with .OCX extensions).

The project file is a simple ASCII text file and may be edited with any text editor, including NOTEPAD (which comes with Windows). Once you learn the format of the project file you may have reason to edit it directly but in general, most programmers do their editing within the VB IDE.

The project file is saved with an extension of .VBP (Visual Basic Project). Other files saved by VB include the following extensions:
- .FRX : graphics associated with the form
- .BAS : code not associated with control events

The good thing about splitting a project into many files is that you can use a file (form or otherwise) in one or more projects. If you make a change to the one file, all using projects see the change.

In the following VB IDE example, you see a project with two forms, each with multiple controls. The filename of each form is displayed in the project window, as is the name of a single .BAS file. Together, all three files make up the VB project.

 

 

Here is the content for each of the files. You will note that the files are in ASCII text. By inspection, you can guess what a lot of the line items are for.

 

As you go through more of the tutorial, the content of the files will make more sense, but even now you can see that the information is not that difficult to decipher.