Visual Basic® .NET Power Coding

Implementing a Custom Component

Creating custom components in Visual Basic 6 was too complicated. The single greatest deterrent to building great components in VB6 was that VB6 did not support inheritance. As a result you could not inherit from a VB6 TextBox control and extend it to do something new. Fortunately, Visual Basic .NET does support true inheritance, and this is all you need to create great components.

The distinction generally made between a component and a control—even though the terms are often used interchangeably—is that controls have a visual aspect at runtime and components do not. Examples of components include the Timer, FileSystemWatcher, and EventLog components. Examples of controls include the TextBox, Label, and Button ...