Design-Time Controls

Design-time controls are an important feature of Visual InterDev. They provide all the benefits of component software as provided by standard ActiveX controls, such as plug-and-play functionality and visual editing at design time. However, design-time controls generate HTML-based content, which is viewable on any platform and any browser. Design-time controls can also generate the server-side or client-side scripting required to accomplish simple or complex tasks within a Web site. In essence, they are visual helper components that help you construct dynamic Web applications based on HTML, client script, and server script.

It is hard to overstate the importance of design-time controls for Visual InterDev. This product derives maximum extensibility using design-time controls, given that third-party software vendors and corporations can seamlessly extend the tool with custom design-time controls to add specialized functionality. Design-time controls can be developed in any language that supports COM, such as C, C++, Java, and Visual Basic. Visual InterDev 6 can also host Java applet design-time controls.

Visual InterDev 6 builds on Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) foundation by providing special design-time controls that generate much of the server-side scripting, including the ADO calls necessary to establish database connections within a Web site, perform queries, and display results. In many cases, you can use the design-time controls to create data-driven Web sites with little additional programming required. Visual InterDev 6 enables you to view and develop directly in Active Server scripting using the ADO component for maximum flexibility.

The new design-time controls included in Visual InterDev 6 are designed to reduce the time it takes you to build applications. The new controls are more granular than those included in Visual InterDev 1. For instance, now you have not only data controls like the new Recordset control, but also Button, Textbox, Listbox, and other controls that let you pull them together like components in a Visual Basic application.

Microsoft supplies a growing set of design-time controls on its Visual InterDev Web site (at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vinterdev/), in effect allowing the live upgrading of the tool with new functionality. And over time independent software vendors (ISVs) will also provide hundreds of design-time controls compatible with Visual InterDev, just as hundreds of ActiveX controls (OCXs) are now available for use with Visual Basic. Visual InterDev also supports standard ActiveX controls as a way to extend Web pages with client-side software components that execute within the browser.