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Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

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377 points porterde | 2 comments | 14 Nov 24 21:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.427s | source
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wiseowise ◴[14 Nov 24 22:51 UTC] No.42142078[source]▶
Still don't understand how we went from this to modern GUI toolkits.

It looks and works so intuitively.

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Onavo ◴[14 Nov 24 22:58 UTC] No.42142147[source]▶
The answer is simple, mobile and relative layouts. GUI builders are easy when you can just use absolute positioning for everything (see Retool and the dozens of Retool clones). They become insanely complex when you can't.
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1. mattmanser ◴[14 Nov 24 23:32 UTC] No.42142436[source]▶
Just want to add to what other people are saying, not only did VB6 support relative positioning, but the history of responsive sizing in applications wasn't because of mobiles.

It was when monitors started changing sizes. Everyone used to have 800 x 600. Then the market exploded.

And different monitor resolutions appeared and became divergent way before the iPhone came out.

There was a period in desktop applications where some apps were absolutely positioned and didn't support anything apart from the 800 x 600 layout. You'd get this huge gutter on the right and bottom of the application window.

It was fairly brief, as changing forms from absolute positioning to relative positioning in VB6 was pretty easy.

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2. epcoa ◴[15 Nov 24 02:23 UTC] No.42143410[source]▶
> Just want to add to what other people are saying, not only did VB6 support relative positioning

Did it? I know .NET WinForms does with Control.Anchor, but that is VB.NET, not VB6.

It’s been many years but I don’t recall any method for that in VB6. As someone else noted you could handle the resize handler and move things around yourself.