Visual Basic Concepts

ActiveX EXE Component Creation Summary

See Also

In order to introduce new concepts in the most natural order, the procedures in this chapter have not followed the normal sequence of steps for creating an out-of-process component. When you create a new ActiveX EXE component, the steps you’ll generally follow are these:

1. Determine the features your component will provide.
   
   
2. Determine what objects are required to divide the functionality of the component in a logical fashion.
   
   
3. Design any forms your component will display.
   
   
4. Design the interface — that is, the properties, methods, and events — for each class provided by your component.
   
   
5. Create a separate test project, usually a Standard Exe project.
   
   
6. Implement the forms required by your component.
   
   
7. Implement the interface of each class.
   
   
8. As you add each interface element or feature, add features to your test project to exercise the new functionality.
   
   
9. Compile your Exe and test it with all potential target applications.

Note   This topic is part of a series that walks you through creating a sample ActiveX EXE. It begins with the topic Creating an ActiveX EXE Component.

For More Information   General design issues for ActiveX components are discussed in "General Principles of Component Design" and "Debugging, Testing, and Deploying Components." Issues exclusive to code components are discussed in "Building Code Components." The step-by-step procedures in "Creating an ActiveX DLL" demonstrate other component features, including object lifetime, circular references, global objects, showing modal and modeless forms from in-process components, and another use for events.