Microsoft's Upcoming Vista To Support Legacy VB6 Apps

Will Microsoft's forthcoming Vista OS support legacy applications written in VB6 (Visual Basic 6)? Microsoft plans to answer that question in detail about a month from now, a timeframe that happens to coincide with the one-year anniversary of a petition from developers asking for better support of the traditional VB environment during the emerging .NET era. Microsoft is currently readying a white paper about VB6 support in the next edition of Windows, disclosed Jay Roxe, Microsoft's lead product manager for Visual Studio, in an interview with DevSource.

But for now, Roxe is willing to say that when Vista goes out the door, Microsoft will extend mainstream support for the VB6 runtime — already being supplied through the end of the Windows XP lifecycle — by another six or seven years, through the end of the Vista lifecycle.