The Visual Designer

The visual designer, or design-time object, manages the design-time aspects of the ActiveX designer. The visual designer interacts with the end user and controls the look and feel of the ActiveX designer within the host environment. It also provides information about the objects in the ActiveX designer and allows browsers, wizards, and other tools to manipulate them. All ActiveX designers must provide a visual designer. The visual designer's window is contained within a frame window managed by the host environment.

Using the visual designer, end users not only can create objects and use their properties, methods, and events, but also can write application-specific code to manipulate the objects they create. (Code editor windows are implemented by the host's development environment.) The end user's code and objects become part of the executable application, or run-time object. The run-time object may be the same as the visual designer, or it may be different.