For many reasons. One reason, as you will learn, is beceause it’s extremely simple and easy to use. The second reason is because that simplicity can be used to make some great working programs. If you are really into it you might eventually be able to program your own game. Before any of that, we will start with a very simple program, a web browser.
A web browser: Simple yet functional and very useful. You can use it as your own web browser or send it to friends, you can use it to go to a certain web page to advertise. Many fun things to do made possible in a few lines of code.
Let’s get started.
First make sure you have these:
- Visual Basic 6
- Understanding of VB6(Don’t make this your first tutorial)
- The component “Microsoft Internet Controls”
First open up VB6 and start a new “Standard EXE” Make the form really big if you know how, with the little computer screen in the right bottom corner, make it the size of the whole screen. Now go to the component menu by right clicking the compnent list or clicking “Project>Components” or by pressing “Ctrl+T”. Look through the component list until you see “Microsoft Internet Controls” and check the little box. Now remember making your form really big? Now click the component you just added and make it cover the whole screen but leave a little bit of room at the top for the address bar, and whatever else you will add to your browser.
Now the basics are ready lets get the buttons/address bar ready.For the address bar add a combo box in the space at the top you left empty. Call it whatever you want but in this tutorial its called the basic “Combo1” make sure the text is blank. Now make a command button beside it with the caption “Go” in this tutorial the button is called “Command1”.
Lets start the coding part double click the button “Go” and paste the code
WebBrowser1.Navigate Combo1.Text
Combo1.AddItem Combo1.Text
Now explained,
WebBrowser1.Navigate Combo1.Text, “Webbrowser1.navigate” Webbrowser1 is the name of our web browser component “.navigate” is telling webbrowser1 to navigate to the address “combo1.text”. Now combo1 is not an address so the “.text” is added to tell the webbrowser to look at the text in combo1.
Combo1.AddItem Combo1.Text, Very basic....its just telling Combo1 to add the text of Combo1 to Combo1. It might take reading that a few times to actually get what I mean. Or try it out and understand in a snap. Now you may just notice that the enter button does not make the go button work. Well not yet it doesn’t. Now since explaining the first part of code this one might be a little bit easier to understand so I’ll just explain the enter key part.
First right after the “End sub” of the” Command1_click” sub press enter once or twice then paste this
Private Sub Combo1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
On Error Resume Next
If KeyAscii = vbKeyReturn Then
WebBrowser1.Navigate Combo1.Text
End If
End Sub
Now some of this is pretty simple so I’ll just explain as I said the enter key part.
Private Sub Combo1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
Pretty simple, just tells the program that this sub operates on Combo1 when a button is pressed.
On Error Resume Next
Does this need explanation, just read it it explains it self.
If KeyAscii = vbKeyReturn Then
Finally the code that does it all explained part by part:
If KeyAscii..Prepares the program to check for a key being pressed.
= vbKeyReturn Then...Tells the program what button to look for and what if its pressed THEN.(Return is the key it looks for.
WebBrowser1.Navigate Combo1.Text
End If
End Sub
Tells the program what to do after the button is pressed. Then ends the if statement.
Well thats your basic browser.
