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Tutorial 5: Building A Hello World Activex Control in VB: Helloworld Control Plus Test Program

This document provides steps to build a simple "Hello World" ActiveX control in Visual Basic. It describes 11 steps: 1) starting a new ActiveX control project, 2) naming the control project, 3) naming the user control, 4) adding a label and bitmap, 5) saving the project, 6) testing the control in Internet Explorer and a standard EXE, 7) further testing, 8) saving the project group, 9) compiling the control to an OCX file, 10) testing the OCX from a new project, and 11) packaging the control for broader use. The overall process builds, tests, and packages a basic control that displays "Hello World" for learning purposes.

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PANKAJ
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180 views

Tutorial 5: Building A Hello World Activex Control in VB: Helloworld Control Plus Test Program

This document provides steps to build a simple "Hello World" ActiveX control in Visual Basic. It describes 11 steps: 1) starting a new ActiveX control project, 2) naming the control project, 3) naming the user control, 4) adding a label and bitmap, 5) saving the project, 6) testing the control in Internet Explorer and a standard EXE, 7) further testing, 8) saving the project group, 9) compiling the control to an OCX file, 10) testing the OCX from a new project, and 11) packaging the control for broader use. The overall process builds, tests, and packages a basic control that displays "Hello World" for learning purposes.

Uploaded by

PANKAJ
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tutorial 5: Building a Hello World ActiveX

Control in VB
This set of instructions will show you how to build, test and package a
trivial ActiveX control. The control has no code attached to it: it simply
displays some text saying 'Hello World'.

Download
• HelloWorld control plus test program

Step 1. Building an ActiveX Control


Project
• Start VB
• From the File Menu, select New Project
• Select ActiveX Control from the dialog box.

Step 2. Naming your Control Project


• From the Project Menu, select Project1 Properties
• In the dialog box, change the Project Name and Project
description as shown below. This will determine how your
'friendly' name of your component is displayed later on, as well
as the name of your compiled .ocx.
Step 3. Naming your actual control
• In the project explorer window, select UserControl1. Then
change the Name Property for user control 1 to HelloWord1.
Your window should look like the one below.
•
Original Renamed
Step 4. Building your control
• Drop a label into the Control
• Using the Label properties, change its caption to "Hello World"
and its font to 14 point
• Create a 16x15 bitmap (using Microsoft paint) that has some
kind of descriptive image (you can just compose it by writing the
letters HW). From the HelloWorld UserControl properties, point
the ToolboxBitmap to that bitmap. It will eventually appear in the
Toolbox on the left (rather than the generic toolbox control
image, shown greyed out on the bottom of the left pane below).

Step 5. Saving your control


• This is probably a good time to save the project, just in case!
Save it in a folder called (say) HelloWorldV1
Step 6. Testing your control by two
methods
• Now we will test this simple control via two methods.
• The first method uses Internet Explorer. If you click the play
button, VB will start Internet Explorer, and you will see your
control in it.
• The second method for testing a control uses VB directly. From
the File menu, select Add Project and then select the Standard
EXE icon (the dialog box is the same as the one already seen in
Step 1)
• From the Project explorer, right-click on Project1(Project1) to
raise the context menu, and select 'Set as Startup'. From now
on, when you press the play button it will start this program
instead of using Internet explorer.
• Close the form containing your hello world control. and then
raise the Project1 Form.
• You will see an icon in the bottom of the toolbar: its tooltip will
say HelloWorld1. Select this, and drop it into the form. Your
window should look something like the one below.
• Feel free to browse the properties of your HelloWorld control in
the Properties window: you will see that its properties is not a
label! Rather, these are the default properties that every ActiveX
control made in VB have.
• Just for fun, add a few more HelloWorld controls into your form
window. The nice thing about controls is that you can have lots
of them!
Step 7. Testing the project
• Test the program by hitting play. It should bring up the following
window.
Step 8. Saving the project and the
project group
• Save the project group (this is both the control and the sample
application you just made). To do this cleanly, when you save
create a new folder called "Test" under "HelloWorldV1" and save
everything to that.

Step 9. Compiling your OCX


• Through the project explorer, close Project1 and open up your
HelloWorld control again.
• Compile your control by selecting 'Make HCIHelloWorld1.ocx'
from the file menu. Save it in your HelloWorldV1 folder.
• Close down VB

Step 10. Testing your OCX from a new VB


project.
• Start a new version of VB, and create a new .exe project.
• Select Components from the Project menu, as shown below.
Scroll the list until you find HCI Hello World Version 1. Check the
checkbox, and then Ok. This will add the hello world control icon
to your controls window.
• Repeat Steps 7 and 8.
Step 11. Packaging your OCX
• Because of security settings on our machines, we cannot use the
standard packaging properties as it will not register your
component correctly. We will show you how to do this in lab.
Once it is done, your control will be available to any VB program
on that machine.

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