Hey, I want to give VB a try out. Im good with HTML and CSS, and ok with PHP.
I downloaded and installed Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition, is this the right program to use?
- If so, I made a little project already but I can't save it as .exe. How can I do that?
- If not, what is the right program to use for learning VB?

I believe Visual Basic is meant for Software programmers (or am i wrong here?) I have also heard dat you can use VB to build web aplications. It actually depends on wat u wanna do.

VB 2008 Express Ed. is quite good, so I have heard 'cos I have never used it myself. U can give it a trial though

Well, if you know PHP, it shouldn't be hard transfering to Visual Basic... I don't know how VB 2008 Express looks like, but it's quite different from all previous versions of Visual Basic... It's completely object oriented, and as a PHP programmer, that could pose a small obstacle...

You can't save a project as exe, you should compile it... Lok for Compile as .EXE, or Compile, Build, or Make in the menus, dunno how they did it in .NET...

Hope that helped a bit...

Yup! It did help. When I debug and compile it, it creates an .exe file to run. However, people need the .NET Framework installed in their windows, exept for Windows Vista. Windows Vista comes with the .NET Framework pre-installed.

Yeah... That's the other reason I don't like .NET languages... You have an application whose distribution is no more than 2Mb with all the runtimes, and additional files you need, and then, you have a .NET application, whose distribution is what, 25Mb? Don't like it...

Though, great to hear you're making progress...

I also hate that... But what can we do? I think Microsoft isn't planning to returnto the old way VB was compiled.

Well... I'm not sure about the differences between the Express Edition (wich is free) and the Professional. But anyway, let's see: YOU CAN compile the to an EXE, but as he said, users will need the .NET Framework installed. To "compile" (the only thing it does is interpreting it to IL) the project you must click on Project menu, choose Properties (I'm not sure, Idon't remember. But is one with an icon of a lot gray) and, where you was coding or drawing the form, will appear lots of options, boxes and etc. You must look at the left part of there and click on Publish. There you should fill some things (or not, it's your choice) and click on Publish (in the center of the screen). After it is done, there you got.

Where is it saved? Well, since I'm not sure about the diferences between the Express and Pro Edition, they should be stored in your My Documents folder\Visual Studio\Projects\Project Name\Project Name\publish. There will be other files and the exe file. You can copy only the exe and it will work (with the .NET Framework installed).

Hope that helps

If you want to use the latest software you shouldn't start with a beta version.
Try out the Express 2k5, you'll find much more sources, and resources, to learn...
You should start with little programs like "Hello World!".
Vb is really basic, trust me, after a week you'll start thinkin' about moving to db's, to make it more interesting.
Good luck for you.