The Web Page

First I edit the AXGlue web page using Microsoft’s ActiveX Control Pad application. This is a wonderful piece of software that Microsoft distributes for free on the Internet (http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/cpad); it does most of the work needed to add ActiveX controls to an HTML document. Here’s the edited HTML for the web page.

<html>
<head>
<title>AXGlue Applet</title>
</head>
<body>
<H1>AXGlue Applet</H1>
<P>
This application shows how ActiveX components can be linked 
via Visual Basic, Scripting Edition, and Java applets
</P>
<P>
<hr>
<OBJECT ID="AXTimer" WIDTH=39 HEIGHT=39
 CLASSID="CLSID:59CCB4A0-727D-11CF-AC36-00AA00A47DD2">
    <PARAM NAME="_ExtentX" VALUE="1005">
    <PARAM NAME="_ExtentY" VALUE="1005">
    <PARAM NAME="Interval" VALUE="0">
</OBJECT>
<OBJECT ID="AXLabel" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=100
 CLASSID="CLSID:99B42120-6EC7-11CF-A6C7-00AA00A47DD2">
    <PARAM NAME="_ExtentX" VALUE="3625">
    <PARAM NAME="_ExtentY" VALUE="3625">
    <PARAM NAME="Caption" VALUE="Rotate!">
    <PARAM NAME="Angle" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="Alignment" VALUE="4">
    <PARAM NAME="Mode" VALUE="1">
    <PARAM NAME="FillStyle" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="ForeColor" VALUE="#000000">
    <PARAM NAME="BackColor" VALUE="#B0C4C8">
    <PARAM NAME="FontName" VALUE="Arial">
    <PARAM NAME="FontSize" VALUE="20">
    <PARAM NAME="FontItalic" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="FontBold" VALUE="1">
    <PARAM NAME="FontUnderline" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="FontStrikeout" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="TopPoints" VALUE="0">
    <PARAM NAME="BotPoints" VALUE="0">
</OBJECT>
<P>
<hr>
<applet
    code=AXGlue.class
    name=AXGlue
    width=320
    height=240 >
</applet>
<hr>
<a href="AXGlue.java">The source.</a>
<SCRIPT language="VBScript">
<!--
sub window_onLoad
    document.AXGlue.setLabelCtl AXLabel
    document.AXGlue.setTimerCtl AXTimer
    /AXTimer.Interval = 1000
end sub

sub AXTimer_Timer
    document.AXGlue.changeLabel
end sub
-->
</SCRIPT>
</body>
</html>

After some quick explanatory headers, I insert a Timer control named AXTimer and a Super Label control named AXLabel. The ActiveX Control Pad automatically includes the appropriate IDs and parameters for each control, based on their registered definitions. Visual Studio adds the instructions for loading the AXGlue applet. The script performs two tasks:

The window_onLoad subroutine executes when the web page is loaded, passing references to the ActiveX controls to the applet and initializing the Timer control’s interval. I’ll describe the setLabelCtl and setTimerCtl methods in a moment.
When AXTimer generates an event, a call goes out to the AXTimer_Timer subroutine, which then passes along the event to the applet via the changeLabel method.

That’s the only code needed to link the ActiveX controls to the Java applet! Now let’s look at the Java code and see what’s going on there.