Chapter 11 -- Integrating Client-Side ActiveX Controls and Java Applets

Chapter 11

Microsoft Visual InterDev provides tools for inserting Microsoft ActiveX controls and Java applets into Web pages. You can drag them from the Toolbox and drop them into a page, or you can manually code them in an HTML or Active Server Pages (ASP) Web page. You can script them using any scripting language that the page's target platform supports, such as Microsoft VBScript or Microsoft JScript. The client-side script is sent from the page down the HTML stream to the client browser. The Web server (such as Internet Information Server [IIS]) does not interpret or interact with the client-side script unless it is script that has been dynamically created.

An ActiveX control or Java applet is often a user interface element, such as a command button, a text box, or a list box. But ActiveX controls and Java applets are not restricted to the mundane—they can be any piece of software imaginable. They can include audiovisual movie player controls, grids, graphs, treeviews, listviews, toolbars, calendars, progress bars, spreadsheets, video games, and even entire applications.

You can find many ActiveX controls and Java applets on the Web and from various vendors. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 comes with several ActiveX controls, and many others are available for free from Microsoft's Web site and other Web sites.

In this chapter, we'll look at how to incorporate ActiveX controls and Java applets into your Visual InterDev applications. By using these types of controls within your applications, you can enhance the client-side interactivity and performance of your applications and provide end users with a richer experience similar to that of client/server applications. Combined with client-side scripting and Dynamic HTML (DHTML), ActiveX controls and Java applets give you complete programmatic control over the objects contained in the browser window.