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Developing COM/ActiveX Components with VB6: A Guide to the Perplexed
$19.95 [eBook]

Outline

Contact Desaware directly to purchase the eBook edition.

Part I - Core Technologies

1. ActiveX Myths

• ActiveX is only important for Internet programming and web sites.
• ActiveX is only for advanced VB programmers.
• ActiveX is only important if you are creating servers or controls.

2. ActiveX - A historical (but technical) perspective

• From DDE to OLE 1.0 - Who cares anymore?
• 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
• Object Life Cycles - DLL, EXE and Remote Objects
• Object and interface identification.
• Where objects live.

7. ActiveX Components - What's in a name?

• Classes
• ActiveX DLL's (Code Components) (in process)
• ActiveX Servers (out of process)
• ActiveX Controls
• ActiveX Documents (doc objects)
• IIS Applications

Part II - Code Components

8. The Project

• Project overview: Project/Classes/Modules/Forms
• Designing the Object Model
• Instancing
• Project Properties

9. Creating and testing components.

• Quick look at the UI
• Creating and Testing ActiveX Components
• Referencing and reference order
• Error Handling

10. Code & 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

• Characteristics of Collections and Dictionaries
• The Three Four Approaches to Exposing Collections

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

Part III - ActiveX Controls

16. ActiveX Control Fundementals

• Things that every programmer should know about ActiveX Controls before they write a single line of code.
• Design time vs. Runtime vs. Design time vs. Runtime
• The Three Four Models for Control Creation

17. The UserControl Object

• LifeTime Related Events
• Introduction to Property Persistance
• Siting and Display Events and Properties
• Focus Events and Properties
• Transparent Controls
• Other Properties and Methods

18. The Extender and Ambient Objects

• The Extender object
• Ambient Properties

19. The Wonderful World of Properties

• Property types
• Property Procedures
• Control Procedure Attributes
• Custom Objects
• Persistance
• Databinding

20. Property Pages and others.

• Property Page Fundementals
• Property Page Techniques
• About Boxes

21. ActiveX controls for the Internet

• The hyperlink object
• ActiveX controls on web pages
• Downloading, Security and Signing
• The dwBanner control

22. Advanced Techniques

• Visual Basic vs. Visual C++
• Overview of Windows Messaging
• Messaging Examples
• A Tale of Four ListBoxes

Part IV - ActiveX Documents

23. ActiveX Document Fundementals

• What is an ActiveX Document?
• ActiveX Document Programming
• The UserDocument Object

24. Active Documents and the Internet

• The Realty ActiveX Document
• ActiveX documents and HTML

Part 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