ActiveX Documents on the Web
Documents is to ActiveX Documents as stand-alone is to network.
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A document is something like a magazine or magazine article. Or a book, with any number of pages. A government White paper. A legal document, like a deed -- possibly an agreement for the purchase of undeveloped land.
So a document, at the very least, has to be an object of some kind that contains something. It is specifically designed to hold something -- like a bucket to hold water. But it might also be thought of as a window, to use Microsoft terminology. And this, again, makes it a space that can contain something, or through which something is viewed.
We normally think of a document as containing words, or information. But words themselves, after all, are objects of a kind. Not three-dimensional, of course, but objects even so -- they have size, shape, color, and other properties. This brings up another characteristic of ordinary documents, not mentioned in the dictionary, namely that they are passive. Their contents aren't changed by viewing them. You don't interact with them. They are inactive.
But documents needn't be inactive. You can even include programmatic instructions, or code. That is, we can generalize the meaning to include computer programs, and data, as well as text. This means documents can be active, since programs can contain controls -- check boxes, dialog boxes, and so on -- which support interaction.
Generalizing again, documents can also include ActiveX components, meaning ActiveX controls. A further step lets us include programs containing ActiveX controls, such programs being identified as ActiveX documents. So we can now distribute documents as well as controls on the Internet.
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Quoting from Active Visual Basic 5.0, by Guy and Henry Eddon:
... ActiveX Controls makes up the
components used to build other applications, whereas ActveX Documents is the program. ... You don't, for example, put a bunch of ActiveX documents on a form, as you do with ActiveX Controls. Instead, ActiveX Documents is the form, and you put ActiveX controls on it. ActiveX Documents may have properties, but those properties won't show up in the Properties window. Also, there's not much point in having ActiveX Documents fire an event. What would respond to it?The VB development system provides forms on which to place controls or other objects. A form is like a sheet of paper or a canvas -- a place to write or draw things, objects. Or a window -- a place through which to see things. You can identify the things by giving them names. If there's more than one form, each form itself can be identified. That is, each form is an object distinguishable from other objects.
ActiveX controls and ActiveX documents are like ordinary active controls and documents in that they are constructed on form-like objects, also known as windows. The latter forms look like ordinary forms, but they have differences. The upshot is that there are three similarly appearing, but functionally different types of forms, one for ordinary controls, one for ActiveX controls, and one for ActiveX documents. For this reason, the forms are given different names. They are called, respectively:
Forms
UserControls
UserDocuments
Ordinary controls are drawn on ordinary, stand-alone forms. ActiveX controls are put on UserControls. And ActiveX Documents apply UserDocuments (Guy and Henry Eddon):
The ActiveX Documents technology is supported in Visual Basic by a special UserDocument object, just as ActiveX controls are supported by the UserControl object. The UserDocument object has a visual designer that looks identical to that of the one for controls. You design and organize your document using any desired control in the same way you would design a standard Visual Basic form.
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