Other Sources of Information

Automation and ActiveX technologies are implementations of the OLE COM, which provides mechanisms for in-place activation, structured file storage, and many other application features. These parts of OLE are fully described in the following sources:

• OLE Programmer's Reference describes the COM, in-place activation, visual editing, structured file storage, and application registration in terms of the application programming interfaces (APIs) and interfaces provided by OLE.
• Microsoft Interface Definition Language Programmer's Guide and Reference, contained in the Win32 SDK on the MSDN, describes the MIDL compiler.
• Inside OLE, Second Edition, by Kraig Brockschmidt, published by Microsoft Press, provides introductory and how-to information about implementing OLE objects and containers.
• If you are developing C++ applications, the ActiveX Control Developer's Kit and Microsoft Visual C++® version 4.x product documentation describes how to develop Automation applications using C++.

For technical support, see the OLE Programmer's Reference and the documentation for the product with which you received OLE. Support for Automation is also provided on the World Wide Web on the Microsoft home page at www.microsoft.com.

Note ActiveX is Microsoft’s brand name for the technologies that enable interoperability using the COM. OLE is a special-purpose subset of ActiveX. In this document, we use OLE to refer specifically to cases where an object is linked or embedded. We use ActiveX to encompass the broader technology that includes OLE, the Internet, and multimedia.