Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6.0 built into most desktop Microsoft Office applications. Although based on pre-.NET Visual Basic, which is no longer supported or updated by Microsoft, the VBA implementation in Office continues to be updated to support new Office features. VBA is used for professional and end-user development due to its perceived ease-of-use, Office's vast installed userbase, and extensive legacy in business.
Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) is a C++ object-oriented library for developing desktop applications for Windows.
Vector Markup Language (VML) is an obsolete XML-based file format for two-dimensional vector graphics. It was specified in Part 4 of the Office Open XML standards ISO/IEC 29500 and ECMA-376. According to the specification, VML is a deprecated format included in Office Open XML for legacy reasons only.
Extensible Application Markup Language is a declarative XML-based language developed by Microsoft for initializing structured values and objects. It is available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0 in 2006. WPF uses DirectX and attempts to provide a consistent programming model for building applications. It separates the user interface from business logic, and resembles similar XML-oriented object models, such as those implemented in XUL and SVG.
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help is a Microsoft proprietary online help format, consisting of a collection of HTML pages, an index and other navigation tools. The files are compressed and deployed in a binary format with the extension .CHM, for Compiled HTML. The format is often used for software documentation.
Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser winhelp.exe or winhlp32.exe. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from Windows 3.0 through Windows XP. WinHelp was removed in Windows Vista purportedly to discourage software developers from using the obsolete format and encourage use of newer help formats. Support for WinHelp files would eventually be removed entirely in Windows 10.
Help & Manual is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by EC Software, a company based in Austria.
Microsoft Assistance Markup Language is an XML-based markup language developed by the Microsoft User Assistance Platform team to provide user assistance for the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. It makes up the Assistance Platform on Windows Vista.
In Microsoft Windows applications programming, OLE Automation is an inter-process communication mechanism created by Microsoft. It is based on a subset of Component Object Model (COM) that was intended for use by scripting languages – originally Visual Basic – but now is used by several languages on Windows. All automation objects are required to implement the IDispatch interface. It provides an infrastructure whereby applications called automation controllers can access and manipulate shared automation objects that are exported by other applications. It supersedes Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), an older mechanism for applications to control one another. As with DDE, in OLE Automation the automation controller is the "client" and the application exporting the automation objects is the "server".
Microsoft Build Engine, or MSBuild, is a set of free and open-source build tools for managed code under the Common Language Infrastructure as well as native C and C++ code. It was first released in 2003 and was a part of .NET Framework. MSBuild is included with Visual Studio, but can also be run independently through MSBuild's command-line interface.
Sandcastle is a documentation generator from Microsoft. It automatically produces MSDN-style code documentation out of reflection information of .NET assemblies and XML documentation comments found in the source code of these assemblies. It can also be used to produce user documentation from Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML) with the same look and feel as reference documentation.
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.
ActiveX Document is a Microsoft technology that allows users to view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF documents inside web browsers. It defines a set of Component Object Model coding contracts between hosting programs like Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office Binder and hosted documents from programs like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Adobe Reader. This allows them to negotiate communications about commands like save and navigate, as well as merging user interface elements such as menu, to provide a unified user experience.
VSdocman is a documentation generator that allows for code commenting and the automatic generation of technical documentation from C# and VB .NET projects. It is directly integrated in Visual Studio as an extension.
Text Template Transformation Toolkit is a free and open-source template-based text generation framework. T4 source files are usually denoted by the file extension ".tt".
Microsoft Help Viewer (HV) is the offline help system developed by Microsoft that ships with versions of Microsoft Windows including and subsequent to Windows 8, as well as Visual Studio 2010 and its associated MSDN Library.
Blackbird was the codename for an online content authoring platform developed by Microsoft in the mid-90s. Intended to be the online publishing tool for the first version of MSN, "Blackbird" was born of a Microsoft acquisition of Daily Planet Software, and the tool was first conceived prior to the advent of the Internet and Web as we know it today. At the time, AOL and CompuServe were the primary online venues, and the introduction of the Web to mass consumers was about to begin, even as low-bandwidth, dialup connections dominated. "Blackbird" was based on the concept of an object-based backend file system in Microsoft Data Centers, a low-bandwidth-streaming rendering client with page-based layout and embedded interactive client-side ActiveX objects. Fundamentally, it was based on the SGML standard for client-side layout. It became a Microsoft-promoted alternative to HTML for a brief time, just as the commercial Internet and Web Browser were born. But with scripting capability for HTML yet to be demonstrated, it was to be a means to serve dynamic, media-rich applications and documents that contained processing logic, similar to what a user would experience in a desktop environment. Pages in a "Blackbird application" would be able to contain video, audio, graphs, and other OLE based document formats without the need of plug-ins.
.NET Compiler Platform, also known by its codename Roslyn, is a set of open-source compilers and code analysis APIs for C# and Visual Basic (VB.NET) languages from Microsoft.
