hi vb5cce fans.
Like me, you have enjoyed the free visual basic compiler,
"visual basic 5 control creation edition", graciously
provided by microsoft for people who like to write
"objects" (ocx's) to supplement the vbScript language.
The vb5cce compiler was first offered in the late 1990's,
and has been kept available for downloading by microsoft
(surprisingly) until this year (last tested late spring).
Now, the latest link that to the download no longer works:
http://download.microsoft.com/msdownload/sbn/vbcce/vb5ccein.exe
although, the vb5cce "help file" download is still there
(explain that?):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/2/5/5253a7ea-1310-40d8-b762-625c2019310e/ccehelp.exe
O.K., so here's the question. Does anybody know where the
vb5cce compiler download has been moved to, or else know
definitively if microsoft has intentionally removed it.
Also note, while vb5cce was released in the era of win95,
it still works perfectly well on winXP, and so would still
serve a useful purpose -- at least for folks who feel that
vbScript ought to have had more features than ms doeth
provide.
Also note(2): yes, microsoft does now provide vb 2005 express
edition for free (at least for now), and you can use it to
write COM objects callable from script. But, I would assert
that vb2005exp is 10-to-100 times more complicated and
difficult to code with and get a working object. On top of
that, you have to drag along the humongous net framework which
takes up 100 times more storage than the vb5 runtimes.
cheers, jw