Visual Basic Concepts

ActiveX Document Advantages

The advantages of creating and deploying ActiveX documents are:

• You can leverage your knowledge of Visual Basic. If you are skilled in programming Visual Basic, you already have the knowledge to reach your goals — you do not have to learn another programming language (as you do to create an HTML page).
  
  
• You can leverage the Visual Basic programming environment. The full development environment is available to you, including the Visual Basic code window, debugger, and compiler.
  
  
• Ability to create ActiveX documents that run in Internet Explorer. For all intents and purposes, an ActiveX document is a Visual Basic application that is now accessible in a widely-used container.
  
  
• Execution on a local machine. The ActiveX component can contain all the necessary code to deliver the results of complex calculations.
  
  
• Immediate visual feedback about layout of elements. Placing TextBox and CommandButton controls on an ActiveX document gives you immediate feedback about how the document will look. In contrast, coding an HTML document takes practice and guesswork.
  
  
• Support for the Hyperlink object, which allows an ActiveX document to request that the container (if it is Hyperlink-aware) to navigate to another ActiveX document, or a Web site.
  
  
• Support for the AsyncRead method. The method begins an asynchronous transfer of data, allowing other code to execute while the data is retrieved.

Note   There is one control that cannot be placed on an ActiveX document: the OLE Container Control. Also note that embedded objects, such as an Microsoft Excel or Word documents, are not allowed on ActiveX documents.