Future
As of July 1, 2007, Microsoft no longer offers VBA distribution licenses to new customers. Microsoft intended to add .NET-based languages to the current version of VBA ever since the release of the .NET Framework, of which versions 1.0 and 1.1 included a scripting runtime technology named Script for the .NET Framework. Visual Studio .NET 2002 and 2003 SDK contained a separate scripting IDE called Visual Studio for Applications (VSA) that supported VB.NET. One of its significant features was that the interfaces to the technology were available via Active Scripting (VBScript and JScript), allowing even .NET-unaware applications to be scripted via .NET languages. However, VSA was deprecated in version 2.0 of the .NET Framework, leaving no clear upgrade path for applications desiring Active Scripting support (although "scripts" can be created in C#, VBScript, and other .NET languages, which can be compiled and executed at run-time via libraries installed as part of the standard .NET runtime).
Support for VBA in the Mac OS X version of Microsoft Office was dropped (for one version) with the release of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. The official reason given was that VBA relied heavily on machine code written for the PowerPC architecture, and that rewriting this code for dual PowerPC/Intel architectures would have added another 2 years to the development of the suite. However, the Office suite can be automated via AppleScript to an extent. VBA was restored in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Microsoft has clearly stated that they have no plans to remove VBA from the Windows version of Office.
With Office 2010, Microsoft has introduced VBA7 which now contains a true pointer data type: LongPtr. This new data type allows referencing 64-bit address space. The 64-bit install of Office 2010 does not support common controls of MSComCtl (TabStrip, Toolbar, StatusBar, ProgressBar, TreeView, ListViews, ImageList, Slider, ImageComboBox) or MSComCt2 (Animation, UpDown, MonthView, DateTimePicker, FlatScrollBar) so legacy 32-bit code ported to 64-bit VBA code that depends on these common controls will not function. The 32-bit version of Office 2010 is unaffected by this issue. VBA7 includes no 64-bit version of the common controls, so it leaves developers with no means to migrate VBA applications to 64-bits. Microsoft suggests contacting the software vendor for 64-bit versions of VBA controls.
Read more about this topic: Visual Basic For Applications
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“That children link us with the future is hardly news. . . . When we participate in the growth of children, a sense of wonder must take hold of us, providing for us a sense of future. Without the intimation of concrete individual futures, it is hardly worth bothering with social change and improvement.”
—Greta Hofmann Nemiroff (20th century)
“The future is just as much a condition of the present as is the past. “What shall be and must be is the ground of that which is.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It is given to few to add the store of knowledge, to strike new springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)