Software was the original SSPublishing, which officially is called Suave Software & Publishing. Although I am a life long printer by trade, I am a self-taught programmer. When computers entered the printing trade, I very quickly caught on to them and was hooked by what they were able to accomplish. I taught myself how to program and wrote an estimating system for small print shops called PDQ. It was DOS based but had a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and was proudly sold as being able to run on any PC made in the last 20 years when it debuted. It was very successful through four versions. Windows 7 was the first Microsoft OS it could no longer run on and so it's life came to an end. Although I often had plans to rewrite it in Visual Basic, I was very busy with my 2nd print shop at the time and so I never got around to it.

   Since and during those years, I learned many different languages including Delphi, a little ASM and all flavors of classic Visual Basic. When Microsoft began their MS.Net platform, I learned how it works and what their vision was for the future of software development. After that I added C# to my forte, which is now my favorite DotNet language.

   I am currently working on a framework for classic Visual Basic (versions 5/6) called Visual Queen. The name comes from my previous framework for Microsoft QBasic. Many years ago I had developed a framework for QB called Queen Basic or Queen-B for short. This was a starter module for QBasic programs that had many pre-coded handy routines a programmer might need. Later, I had extended this to also contain a complete GUI with a few code controls which I called Visual Queen Basic or VisQueen for short. With Visual Basic of course, Microsoft has already given us a fantastic way to create our GUI, and even the power to extend the VB IDE itself by adding OCX controls. This is all fine and dandy, but it comes with an overhead price. You must include the control in your distribution package and each control that is used must be registered on your users system. Also, now with 32-bit Windows being Thunked on 64-bit machines, this can cause other problems as the Windows O/S keeps being extended, but VB 5/6 get left further in history. I believe classic VB programs will be able to run in the latest version of Microsoft Windows for some time still, and Microsoft themself has confirmed this with me as there is still a very large user base of WIN32 apps they must contend with. But, the problems just explained will only get worse with time. That is my purpose for VisQueen for VB. It is a collection of useful routines to easily extend a VB program. It also contains very light weight code controls. These controls and their properties are ONLY set in code, they do not appear in the VB IDE. This makes them a little harder to develop your app with, but when it comes to compile time, they get compiled right into your EXE, making distribution a snap.

   Although this page will probably end up being shareware for sale, if you are need of any custom software solutions, please write or call.

steve@sspublishing.net
941-303-7211

Software Development