Microsoft & .NETVisual BasicProduct Review: Advantage

Product Review: Advantage

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VB Advantage is a comprehensive design-time add in that allows the user to customise
the environment with a set of powerful tools. All these tools are based around the VBA
macro language. The user of VB Advantage can write his own programs in the macro language
that will make his programming a lot more efficient and rapid.


Click for larger image

The VB-Advantage Macro Code Window

The macro language has the power to access every part of your VB Project through the VB
Advantage objects. You can therefore do such things as format your code, add comments
automatically, search for every use of a certain object and even sort a list of strings
into alphabetical order through the macro language. Of course, AdvantageWare has provided
a large set of ready-made macros that most users will find very useful. My personal
favourite is the code formatter. This clever macro can be made to go through the code of
your whole project and format it using rules you specify. You could, for example, tell it
to remove all comments or split long lines up into shorter ones using the underscore.

All macros are accessible using the VB Advantage Toolbar that allows you to quickly run
any macros just by pushing a button. The Toolbar can be easily edited. Each button can
correspond to running a macro, program, help files or text file. The toolbar is edited
using the Tool Set Manager, a completely separate application. You can even have multiple
toolbars. As standard VB Advantage is shipped with 12 toolbars, with a total of over 100
macros!


VB Advantage Tool Window

Other features include the String Manager, which gives you a list of all the strings
being used in the project. This is effectively a very fast global find and replace which
is a lot more powerful.

All in all, this is a very powerful VB Add-In, one that should find its way onto most
developers desktops.

Contact Details

Name : VB Advantage
Developer : Advantage Ware
Address :
Advantageware
425 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017-1155
Fax : (212) 319-1016
Web site : http://www.advantageware.com
Email : toni@advantageware.com

Review from VBWorld

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