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:
“I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“There are many of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are becoming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)