IN THIS CHAPTER

• ActiveX: The <OBJECT> tag
• An easier way: the ActiveX Control Pad
• Inserting ActiveX controls
• Working with HTML layouts
• Working with the Script Wizard
• Programming Web pages with VBScript
• The differences between VBA and VBScript
• Attaching scripts to a page
• The scripting object hierarchy
• How VBScript interacts with forms
• Example: a mortgage calculator
• Summary

—Orson Welles

As you may know, HTML forms are the Web equivalent of application dialog boxes. This is a reasonable analogy, because both forms and dialog boxes use various controls—text boxes, option buttons, lists, command buttons, and so on—to get information from the user. When running applications on their computers, however, few people think of the program's dialog boxes as being the interesting part. Instead, most folks would agree that it's the application itself that's interesting. In the end, dialog boxes are just a necessary evil for making the program do our bidding.

This helps explain why, in the end, Web-based forms aren't all that exciting. They're great for grabbing information from the user and for querying databases, but that's about the extent of it. No, to make your Web pages truly interesting, you need to give people applications to play with. This is where ActiveX comes in. ActiveX controls are miniprograms that turn an otherwise-lifeless Web page into a dynamic, interactive object. In other words, the page becomes an application.

With this sort of promise, it's no wonder that ActiveX is one of the hottest and most exciting areas of Web page development. If you're interested in leveraging this powerful technology for your Web pages, this chapter shows you several methods for getting the job done. You'll also be introduced to VBScript, the subset of VBA that lets you program Web-based ActiveX objects.