README.TXT

Playing Card Sample Control 
=========================== 
This sample ActiveX Control implements a standard playing card, with the 
ability to show the standard 52 card deck, two jokers, and 13 different 
card backs.  This control is a Windowless control, which uses transparency  
to create the missing card corner effect.   
 
Building 
-------- 
To build card.ocx, the FrameWrk sample must first be built. First run  
\inetsdk\setenv.bat to be sure the ActiveX SDK include, bin, and lib 
directories are included (first) in your environment. Run the 'nmake' 
to build a debug version (built to the Debug subdirectory) or 
'nmake nodebug=1' to build a retail (nodebug) directory into the 
Retail subdirectory. 
 
After building the FrameWrk library you can build the Card 
control by running 'nmake' or 'nmake nodebug=1'. 
 
Sample: ActiveX Video Poker 
--------------------------- 
Included is a sample application which uses card.ocx: ActiveX 
Video Poker.  To run this application, open poker\poker.htm. 
This application also depends on the ielabel control and  
ietimer control. 
 
To debug and work with this example, open poker\main.htm.  This 
file can be used outside of the framesets provided by poker.htm. 
 
Sample: ActiveX Solitaire 
------------------------- 
Included is a sample application which uses card.ocx: ActiveX 
Solitaire.  To run this application, open solitair\sol.htm. 
This application also depends on the ietimer control and the 
HTML Layout Control. 
 
Using the Card Control 
---------------------- 
The Card control is itself controlled through 3 properties: 
 
Suite-- Enum:  0 = Invisible (card not drawn) 
  1 = Clubs 
  2 = Spades 
  3 = Hearts 
  4 = Diamonds 
  -1 to -13 = Card Backs 
 
Number-- Enum:  1 = Ace 
  2 to 10 = Number Cards 
  11 = Jack 
  12 = Queen 
  13 = King 
  14 = Joker 
 
Invert-- Boolean: controls drawing the card inverted, 
      to indicate selection 
 
CardAlignment   -- Enum:  0 = Top Left 
  1 = Top Center 
  2 = Top Right 
  3 = Center Left 
  4 = Center 
  5 = Center Right 
  6 = Bottom Left 
  7 = Bottom Center 
  8 = Bottom Right 
  9 = Stretch 
 
By default the card starts in the transparent state.  Setting the  
Suite to any value other than zero will draw the card. 
 
A property page is also included with the control, which can simply  
picking the right property values. 
 
The card control will also fire the following events: 
 
Click-- Mouse Click 
DblClick-- Mouse Double Click 
MouseDown-- Mouse down 
MouseUp-- Mouse up 
MouseMove-- Mouse move 
 
How it Works 
------------ 
To keep the size of the control to a minimum, to minimize internet download 
time, each card is created from the ground up.  The only resources included 
in the control are the basic symbols needed to create the cards, one half 
of each face cards center, and the card backs.  Where possible, monochrome 
and compressed bitmaps are used. 
 
The card control caches all card images after they have been created the 
first time.  For games such as Solitaire in which the cards move 
across one another, and most of the cards in a deck are displayed on the  
screen at the same time, caching all the cards of course yields the best  
animations.  To keep memory usage low, 4-bit DIB bitmaps are used to 
store the cached images. 
 
This control is a Windowless control, which uses transparency to create the  
missing card corner effect.  When used with Internet Explorer, the control 
is Windowed, and the ambient background color is used to fill in the corners. 
When used in the HTML Layout Control, or another Windowless control host, 
the corners are transparent and the card or background beneath can be seen.