Introduction.
A Different Kind of Book. What's in A Guide to the Perplexed? Final Comments.
I. CORE TECHNOLOGIES.
1. ActiveX Myths.
2. ActiveX: A Historical (But Technical) Perspective.
The Application-Centric Environment. The Road to ActiveX. ActiveX: Is It Technology or Is It Marketing?
3. Objects and Visual Basic.
The Theory of Object-Oriented Programming. Objectless Programming. Once Again, with Objects. The Theory of Object-Oriented Programming Revisited.
4. The Component Object Model: Interfaces, Automation, and Binding.
Characteristics of COM Objects. The Sunday COMics. Automation (Dispatch) Interfaces and Binding.
5. Aggregation and Polymorphism.
Back to Binding. An Object as Object. Aggregation. An Object Implements.
6. The Life and Times of an ActiveX Component.
Objects: Are They Real or Are They Memory? Process Spaces: The Final Frontier. The Life Cycle of a DLL Object. The Life Cycle of an EXE Object. The Life Cycle of a Remote Object. Performance Issues.
7. ActiveX Components: What's in a Name?
ActiveX Controls and Documents. Internet Components. ActiveX Trade-offs.
II. CODE COMPONENTS.
8. The Project.
Project Overview. Instancing. Project Properties.General Property Settings. Moving On.
9. Creating and Testing Components.
A Quick Look at the User Interface. Creating and Testing ActiveX Components. Referencing and Reference Order. Error Handling.
10. Code and Classes: Beyond the Manuals.
Methods and Properties. Procedure Attributes. Object Procedures: Public, Private, and Friend. Selected Topics.
11. Events.
A Method by Any Other Name. Back to COM. Combining OLE Callbacks and OLE Events. Control Events.
12. Collecting Objects.
The Characteristics of Collections and Dictionaries. The Three Four Approaches to Exposing Collections in Components.
13. Object Lifetime.
Referencing. Circular References. Selected Topics. MTS Object Lifetime.
14. Multithreading.
On Threads and Processes. Multithreaded Components. Testing and Debugging Multithreaded Components. Multithreading Examples. Background Operations Revisited.
15. Bringing It All Together: The StockQuote Server.
Top-Down Design. Implementation.
III. ACTIVEX CONTROLS.
16. ActiveX Control Fundamentals.
Things Every Programmer Should Know About ActiveX Controls Before He or She Writes a Single Line of Code. Design Time Versus Runtime Versus Design Time Versus Runtime. The Three Four Models for Control Creation.
17. The UserControl Object.
Lifetime-Related Events. Introduction to Property Persistence. Siting and Display Events and Properties. Focus Events and Properties. Transparent Controls. Transparent Constituent-Based Controls. Other Properties and Methods.
18. The Extender and Ambient Objects.
The Extender Object. Ambient Properties.
19. The Wonderful World of Properties.
Property Data Types. Property Procedures. Control Procedure Attributes. Custom Objects. Persistence. Databinding. The Hard Way.
20. Property Pages and Others.
Property Page Fundamentals. Property Page Techniques. About Boxes and Others.
21. ActiveX Controls and the Internet.
The HyperLink Object. ActiveX Controls on Web Pages. Downloading, Security, and Signing. The dwBanner Control.
22. Advanced Techniques.
Visual Basic Versus Visual C++. Overview of Windows Messaging. Messaging Examples. A Tale of Four Listboxes.
IV. ACTIVEX DOCUMENTS.
23. ActiveX Document Fundamentals.
What Is an ActiveX Document? ActiveX Document Programming. Should You Use a DLL or an EXE Server? The UserDocument Object.
24. ActiveX Documents and the Internet.
The Realty ActiveX Document. ActiveX Documents and HTML.
V. SELECTED TOPICS.
25. Versioning.
Version Resources. Version Compatibility.
26. Licensing and Distribution.
The Purpose of Licensing. ActiveX Control Licensing. Alternative Licensing Approaches.
27. IIS Applications.
Dynamic HTML. Active Server Pages. Introducing Webclasses-Another Point of View.
28. A Matter of State.
Understanding State. Exploring State in IIS Applications. Closing Note.
Index.
