Hi,
What is ActiveX and what are the types of ActiveX Components in VB?
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Hi,
What is ActiveX and what are the types of ActiveX Components in VB?
The main term here is ActiveX component. The remaining things i.e. ActiveX control, ActiveX Exe and ActiveX Dll are three different kinds of ActiveX components.
ActiveX Dll and ActiveX Exe are code components that are not integrated in the VB IDE like the ActiveX control, so that u cant put any instances of those code components by double clicking or drag-dropping those on ur form. Rather these code components expose their functionality by methods and properties, that u can change/access through only ur code. More precisely code components are classes that must be accessed through a properly declared object variable and they dont have a visible interface.
Now ActiveX Exe and ActiveX dll are different from each other in how they get instantiated with the client application. This is a detailed topic, so i cant discuss it here and u need to study this from some book.
1.Standard EXE.
2.ActiveX EXE.
3.ActiveX DLL.
4.ActiveX document.
5.ActiveX Control.
6.Project Group.
Visual Basic 5 and 6 give you all the tools you need to create powerful ActiveX controls, which you can then reuse in all your projects. More precisely, you can create two different types of ActiveX controls:
- Private ActiveX controls that can be included in any type of Visual Basic project. They're saved in files with the .ctl extension, and you can reuse them in any other Visual Basic project merely by adding the file to the project. (This is reuse at the source-code level.)
- Public ActiveX controls that can be included only in ActiveX control projects; you have to compile them into OCX files, and then you can use them in any other Microsoft Windows application written in Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, or any other development environment that supports ActiveX controls. (This is reuse at the binary level.)
Visual Basic 5 was the first language that permitted programmers to create ActiveX controls using a visual approach. As you'll see in a moment, you can create powerful controls by simply grouping simpler controls together: These controls are known as constituent controls. By putting together a PictureBox and two scroll bar controls, for example, you can create an ActiveX control that can scroll its contents. Visual Basic also allows you to create an ActiveX control without using any constituent controls. These are the so-called owner-drawn ActiveX controls.
You should also keep this in mind when working with ActiveX controls: You're used to distinguishing between two distinct types of people interacting with your program-the developer and the user. To better understand how ActiveX controls behave, you need to take another role into account, the author of the control itself. The author's job is to prepare a control that will be used by the developer to deliver an application to the user. As you'll see, the author's and developer's perspectives are sometimes different, even though the two roles might be occupied by the same person. (That is, you might act as the author of the control and then as the developer who uses it.)
Creating the UserControl Module
Please have a look at this!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...94(VS.60).aspx
Hope this helps you! :)