The book begins with a clear explanation of basic object-oriented concepts, as well as a listing of new Visual Basic 6 features. The first half of the book presents Kurata's Goals, User Interface, Implementation, Data Design, Strategies (GUIDS) software design process. First she defines project requirements, including project scheduling; and then she shows the importance of looking at goals, which leads to defining user scenarios and the objects for a system. Designing the user interface comes next, with attention to menus and form design. Implementation issues follow, including a discussion of today's multitiered system architectures. Next come sections on data design, with database tables. Finally, the design process looks at strategies for actually coding a project. (Here, advice on such topics as naming conventions and error handling will help you write more maintainable Visual Basic code.)

The second half of the book looks at how to build programs with Visual Basic and how to begin with class design (with twelve common questions about classes), including information on persistence and using collections. More detail on the inner workings of Visual Basic class interfaces and ActiveX follows. The author presents a simple ActiveX control and surveys support for database and Internet programming in Visual Basic.