This chapter and "Debugging, Testing, and Deploying Components" contain those topics that apply to all types of ActiveX components. These chapters provide necessary background for the in-depth treatment of component types in subsequent chapters.
This chapter begins with "Component Basics," a group of topics that explain key terminology and concepts of component design.
The rest of the topics in "General Principles of Component Design" and "Debugging, Testing, and Deploying Components" are organized according to the general sequence of development tasks for components:
See "Adding Classes to Components."
See "Adding Properties and Methods to Classes," "Adding Events to Classes," "Providing Named Constants for Your Component," "Providing Polymorphism by Implementing Interfaces," and "Organizing Objects: The Object Model."
The remainder of the task-oriented topics are contained in "Debugging, Testing, and Deploying Components." In addition to the following development tasks, they cover distribution, version compatibility, and creating international versions of your component.
Component Basics Component creation terminology and concepts; the limitations of component project types; startup and shutdown rules. |
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Adding Classes to Components Class module basics for components, including instancing models, default properties, and robustness. |
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Adding Properties and Methods to Classes Interface How To’s, including deciding whether a member is a property or method, private communication using Friend methods, and allowable data types. |
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Adding Events to Classes Declaring, raising, and handling events in classes provided by your component. |
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Providing Named Constants for Your Component How to add named constants to your component’s type library. |
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Private Communications Between Your Objects The objects provided by your component may need to exchange information or perform actions you don’t want to expose to users of your component. |
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Providing Polymorphism by Implementing Interfaces When several objects implement the same interface, client applications can gain improved performance through polymorphism. |
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Organizing Objects: The Object Model Make it easier for people to use your component by providing relationships between the objects your component provides. Further implications of Instancing. |