Table of contents: Why use Visual Basic. Why change to Version 5? Is this book for you? How this book is organised. New features in Version 5. What computer do you need to run Visual Basic 5? Versions of Visual Basic 5. Conventions.- The Visual Basic Environment. Starting Visual Basic 5. The Visual Basic design screen. The form. The Form Layout Window. The Project Explorer Window. The Properties Window. The Visual Basic standard menu bar and toolbar. The toolbox. Shrinking and Growing. Outline of the Shrinking and Growing program. Creating a new project. Defining the user interface. Moving and Scaling. The properties window. Changing Captions. Displaying a picture. Supported file types. Common problems. Running the program. Event driven software. Making the buttons work. Saving the project.- Managing Projects and Files.- Standard Controls.- Buying a New PC.- Displaying Text.- Declaring and Using Variables.- Controlling Program Flow.- Procedures and Functions.- Debugging.- Object Oriented Programming.- ActiveX Controls.- Creating and Using Menus.- Using Custom Controls.- Creating and Using Graphics.- Mouse and Keyboard Events.- Databases.- Menu and Toolbar Reference.