Chapter 7

Persisting, Saving, and Debugging an ActiveX Designer

ActiveX designers support persistence interfaces to save data for their visual designers and run-time objects. The host loads the persistent data to reestablish the visual designer or to load the run-time object.

To retain persistent data, you must implement one or more of the ActiveX persistence interfaces in both the visual designer and the run-time object. You can also implement the IActiveDesigner interface, which provides a way of saving persistent data when the visual designer and the run-time object are different.

While debugging the run-time object, you may find it useful to communicate through the host's Interactive Development Environment (IDE). Implementing the optional IDesignerDebugging interface allows you to retain designer-specific data between run-mode sessions or to pass a program name or URL to the host for startup.

This chapter covers the following aspects of persisting, saving, and debugging ActiveX designers: