twinBASIC Update: July 21, 2026

On April 23, 2021, I helped Wayne Phillips introduce the world to twinBASIC at the Access DevCon Vienna conference. I boldly predicted that twinBASIC (along with the Monaco editor) would replace VBA and its outdated development environment by 2025. (And I was oh so close...) With that goal in mind, this weekly update is my attempt to keep the project fresh in the minds of the VBA development community.

Every Sunday Monday week, I will be providing updates on the status of the project, linking to new articles discussing twinBASIC, and generally trying to increase engagement with the project. If you come across items that should be included here, please leave a comment below.

Here are some links to get involved with the project:

• Custom twinBASIC IDE Installation Guide
• twinBASIC Discord Server (chat about the project)
• twinBASIC Documentation (list of new features not in VBx)
• GitHub Issue Tracker (report bugs)

Highlights

Picture and Caption Properties Coming Soon to ProgressBar

Posted by fafalone in Discord:

In another sneak preview, soon you'll be able to set a Picture and Caption for a ProgressBar

Native twinBASIC RegEx Library Planned (post-v1.0)

With the recent addition of a regular expression library being added to VBA (due to the planned deprecation of VBScript), GCUser99 asked about whether twinBASIC would offer the same functionality. Wayne confirmed it would, though it will likely be a post-v1 feature.

Discord Chat Summary

^{* Auto-generated via Claude Sonnet 5}

Overview

This week's discussion in the general channel centered on IDE behavior refinements, a preview of upcoming ProgressBar customization options, and ongoing questions about long-term roadmap items like ActiveX Designer support and native RegExp components. The community also shared several impressive real-world projects, including a WebView2-powered networking application and cross-platform WinRT control usage, demonstrating strong engagement and creative use of twinBASIC's capabilities.

IDE & Development

• twixydon raised a UX concern that the editor should be read-only (aside from setting breakpoints) while a project is running or in break mode, since Edit & Continue isn't yet supported and old habits from other IDEs can cause accidental edits.
• fafalone acknowledged this is a tricky habit to break for developers coming from other environments.
• wqweto asked WaynePhillipsEA whether Fusion is being used to host 32-bit Property Pages of ActiveX Controls within the tB IDE, confirming it currently works.
• WaynePhillipsEA clarified that the two systems haven't been formally bridged yet, suggesting the current functionality may be incidental rather than a designed integration.

Feature Development

• fafalone previewed an upcoming enhancement allowing developers to set a Picture and Caption for a ProgressBar control, sharing a screenshot that drew strong community enthusiasm.
• gcuser99 asked whether native RegExp support might be added to tB, following its recent addition to the VBA library across Excel, Access, and Word.
• WaynePhillipsEA confirmed interest in the RegExp request and invited an issue to be opened, but indicated this would likely be a post-v1 feature.

Report Writer & ActiveX Designer Support

• flcurious_04262 revisited a longstanding question about full ActiveX Designer support, specifically in the context of using Active Reports 2 as an ad hoc report writer.
• fafalone confirmed that ActiveX Designer support is planned but not until after the v1.0 release.
• When asked whether this referred to ActiveX designers generally or the native tB Report Writer specifically, fafalone clarified he was referring to ActiveX designers, and was uncertain about plans to expand the native Report Writer's designer capabilities.

Community Showcase

• deletedewd demonstrated that the WinRT WebViewControl works identically when embedded in an Excel VBA UserForm without modification, highlighting tB's flexibility across host environments.
• forliny_44092 shared a polished project UI built with twinBASIC featuring a full IOCP networking stack (HTTP, HTTPS, WS, WSS, SSE, TCP, framed TCP, UDP, and HTTP/2 MITM proxying), with a WebView2 frontend communicating via IPC and secure HTTPS—drawing significant community praise for its Go Wails-like architecture.

Conclusion

This week reflected a mix of near-term polish (editor safety during break mode, ProgressBar customization) and forward-looking roadmap clarifications, with several major features like ActiveX Designer support and native RegExp confirmed as post-v1 priorities. The standout community showcases—particularly forliny_44092's networking-heavy WebView2 application—underscore twinBASIC's growing capability for building sophisticated, modern applications, reinforcing momentum toward the v1 release while highlighting real-world versatility already achievable today.

Around the Web

Simple WinRT WebViewControl Demo

Posted by VanGoghGaming in show-and-tell:

This project instantiates the WinRT WebViewControl on a form and uses the NavigateToLocalStreamUri method to load a simple demo local website (HTML + CSS + JS) from the HtmlContent folder.

The web page showcases a fictive Control Panel for submitting Telemetry Data. The user fills in and submits the data which is then packed in JSON format and sent to the main form to be shown in a TextBox.

Project source code (WebView.zip) available in Discord.

Go Wails...but with twinBASIC

Posted by forliny in the General channel (hyperlink added):

This is my project UI. Built with twinBASIC, it features a full IOCP networking stack supporting HTTP, HTTPS, WS, WSS, SSE, TCP, framed TCP, UDP, and HTTP/2 MITM proxying. The frontend uses WebView2—communicating with twinBASIC functions via IPC and secure HTTPS—essentially functioning like a Go Wails application.

Changelog

Here are the updates from the past week. You can also find this information by visiting the GitHub twinBASIC Releases page.

Releases · WaynePhillipsEA/twinbasic

Contribute to WaynePhillipsEA/twinbasic development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubWaynePhillipsEA

• No new releases this week.
• Next release is scheduled for August 7: