RE: What is Visual Basic

> Hi-
> After my question last week regarding "Software recommendation for
> beginners" (I was looking for html editor suggestions for high school
> students.)  I am not going to recommend any wysiwig editor at this time.
> Neither am I going to recommend Homesite or any equivalent text-based
> editor mainly for budget reasons (they need about 20-30 copies of the
> program) and because they really do not need anything like that at this
> time. They'll be creating simple web pages.

Take a look at the HTMLpad, http://www.intermania.com , the shareware is not
crippled (wasn't, I switch to Homesite a few months ago) and is pretty good
enough. Includes a explorer-like toolbar and a color picker. I don't think
it supports many files, but it was a long time ago since I used it, so maybe
a new version... =)

>
> However, to make the html somewhat  easier for them I started
> searching for
> freeware/shareware html editors to recommend. I am looking for something
> that can handle larger files than notepad/simple text, can copy/paste, can
> undo/redo, can open multiple files. It would also be nice if the html tags
> could be color coded. I came across one program (MatHTML,
> http://http.tamu.edu:8000/~mar6417/mathtml/index.html) that says it is a
> Visual Basic Windows 95/NT application. I am a Mac person, can someone
> explain what Visual Basic is?

Visual Basic is a programming language developped by Microsoft, that was
targeted at a large group of users. Microsoft was aiming at giving
programming skills to about anybody they could. IMHO, it was also a great
marketing move to promote windows.

Visual Basic evolved and became more and more popular. It's now involved in
ActiveX technology, has been used by Microsoft as a concurrent against
JavaScript (AAAAHHHH, they failed! =) ) and is used by a wide user group.

Visual Basic Applications are programs written in Visual Basic, or, as I
often heard on the net, application that ,like the HTMLpad 3.0 beta...,
support Visual Basic interpreting (interpreting: a program that reads code
and execute it without compiling it, without the need of an pre-made
executable file). Needless to say Visual Basic runs only on Windows
machines, as far as I know of, and is pretty slow. I wouldn't recommend
using a vba (Visual Basic Application) unless your students developped it
themselves, or you find a good freeware one.

Christian Lavoie
clavoie(at)enter-net.com

HWG: hwg-software mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA