Showcase – Visual Basic 6 To Cross Platform Xojo
In 2006 Taylor Design was hired to convert a popular Windows nutrition and fitness application for Mac OS X. The original was created using Visual Basic 6, so we recommended using Xojo for the OS X build. With Xojo we could import, convert, and thereby preserve much of the original code including form layouts. We completed the project and our client shipped the first Mac version of their product.
When we bid on the project we pitched our experience with cross platform applications as an advantage. But at the time our client wanted to continue with the VB6 code base and their own staff for Windows builds. Never the less when we converted the VB6 project to Xojo we kept cross platform issues in mind and coded appropriately.
A few years went by and we got a call out of the blue. Our client had hired another team to develop a .NET version of their product. That project exceeded its schedule and budget and was ultimately canceled, leaving them unable to ship an important update for Windows 8.
Given the poor state of the unfinished .NET code base our client asked if we could quickly build a new version for both Mac OS X and Windows from our original Xojo project for OS X.
Our answer: absolutely.
We dusted off the Xojo project; incorporated new features and changes from the VB6 project; created a converter so that existing Windows databases would be automatically imported; and compiled Mac OS X and Windows applications for our client.
Our client can now support both platforms from one code base. Customers can exchange data and even entire databases across platforms. And new features are developed once with both platforms always remaining in sync.
We are looking forward to a modernization of the user interface in 2016, a task made far more affordable by having a single project for both platforms.