Networking ActiveX Controls

Using Internet-specific ActiveX controls makes building network-based applications easier. Although this lesson provides an overview of using Internet ActiveX controls, the ActiveX technology is explained in detail in Chapter 8.

Internet ActiveX Controls

The Microsoft Internet Transfer Control is designed to be an ActiveX wrapper around the Windows Sockets interface. The control supports both the HTTP and FTP protocols to speed application development. Using the HTTP protocol, you can connect to World Wide Web servers to retrieve HTML documents.

With the FTP protocol, you can log on to FTP servers to download and upload files. The UserName and Password properties allow you to log on to private servers that require authentication. Otherwise, you can connect to public FTP servers and download files. Common FTP commands, such as CD and GET, are supported through the Execute method.

Web Browser ActiveX Control

You can use the Web Browser control to quickly add Web functionality to an application. The control automatically displays text and graphics from a Web page by interpreting the HTML.