To COM or Not to COM

Surely you've read about ActiveX Controls for the Internet. You've probably encountered concepts such as composite monikers and anti-monikers, which are part of the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). If you were overwhelmed, don't worry—it's possible to program for the Internet without COM, and that's a good place to start. This chapter and the next chapter are mostly COM-free. In Chapter 36, you'll be writing a COM-based ActiveX document server, but MFC effectively hides the COM details so you can concentrate on Winsock and WinInet programming. It's not that ActiveX controls aren't important, but we can't do them justice in this book. We'll defer to Adam Denning's book on this subject, ActiveX Controls Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 1997). Your study of this book's COM material and Internet material will prepare you well for Adam's book.