Web Page Programming: ActiveX and VBScript

Visual Basic for Applications Unleashed

Chapter 21—Web Page Programming: ActiveX and VBScript

Summary

This chapter began by showing you how to work with the ActiveX Control Pad utility. To help you appreciate what a handy tool the ActiveX Control Pad is, I first went through the syntax of HTML's <OBJECT> tag with its ugly CLASSID attribute and <PARAM> tags. With that safely out of the way, you then learned the much more civilized procedure of using the ActiveX Control Pad to select a control, change its properties, and insert it into your Web page. You also learned about two other components of the ActiveX Control Pad: the HTML Layout control and the Script Wizard.

This chapter also showed you how to use VBScript, a subset of VBA. You first learned about some of the differences between the two languages, especially the elements in VBA that are missing from VBScript (such as the financial functions). I then showed you a couple of methods for inserting VBScript code into an HTML page. From there, we went on a tour of the scripting object hierarchy, including the Window, Document, Navigator, and Form objects. I closed by showing a sample form that demonstrated VBScript's validation and client-side processing capabilities.

Here's where you can find related information:

The HTML Layout Control is similar to the user forms you work with in the Visual Basic Editor. See Chapter 11, "Working with Microsoft Forms," for details.
To learn the basics of HTML, see Appendix D, "An HTML Primer."