The VB6 IDE

Being an older application, there are some modern
conveniences the VB6 IDE does not come with. 

The good news is, it supports an add-in capability
and has had an active programmer community for many years
so quality addins for most things already exist.

Personally i prefer the least amount as possible since
there can be stability issues. A buggy addin can cause the
IDE to crash and you to loose your work. More commonly though
it will just cause some odd nuances to pop up such as having
tool bar icons disappear.

One indispensable add in I have found is the CodeView addin
by Patrick de Groot. This adds a class view explorer type
dockable window giving you a quick (filterable) list of 
methods and events for whichever file is currently active in the
editor.

Another one you will need is the Microsoft mouse wheel fix addin.
This one adds mouse wheel support to the ide editor window.

Another one I always use is my fastBuild addin. this one wraps
several tools into one. The main feature, is that it remembers
the output file path for you and sets it automatically so you
dont have to select it every time you compile. It also offers 
the ability to run a post build command such as running a bat file
to copy it to other directories, or compress it with upx.

It also includes several other tools such as a code database,
a memory window similar to VC, and an enhanced api viewer form.

If you want to add tabs to the IDEs, I have had good luck with
CodeHelp 1.2.2. I dont currently use it, but it was stable.

Another addin i mean to explore is Ullis Vb Code Companion. This one
looks like it adds some great features to the IDE.

For advanced users you can also modify the linker tool path.
By renaming the original linker and putting a vb6 one in its place
you can take control of the link step and do things like link in C
object modules directly into your vb6 code. While i rarely use this,
it is a good capability to have around. I prefer this technique over
addins which run in the IDE and hook the CreateProcess call to modify
its command line arguments there. The tool I use for this is a modified
version of Jim Whites LinkTool.

You can find archived copies of the plugins mentioned above in my 
addins repository.

I also have some posts covering these tools:


And some addin development notes: