How To Determine the Requirements for ActiveX Controls in VFP (156037)

SUMMARY

Visual FoxPro requires that ActiveX Controls support a minimum set of interfaces as defined in the document "OLE Control and Container Guidelines," version 1.1.

For more information on the OLE Control and Container Guidelines and ActiveX technology, see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

137555 OLE Controls and Control Containers Guidelines

154544 Description of ActiveX Technologies

This information is also available on MSDN and at the OLE Developers Web Site.

MORE INFORMATION

The interfaces required by Visual FoxPro are those defined in the OLE Control and Container Guidelines document, version 1.1. Visual FoxPro 3.0 supports controls defined as Simple Controls. Visual FoxPro version 5.0 supports the following categories of controls: Simple Controls, Simple Frame Controls, and Simple Data Bound Controls.

Visual FoxPro does not support and may not function correctly with controls that do not meet these guidelines. This may include new ActiveX controls designed specifically for the Internet. These controls generally include a very minimum set of interfaces.

There is no mechanism provided by OLE that allows Visual FoxPro to verify whether a control meets these Guidelines or to filter the list of controls.

When version 5.0 of Visual FoxPro shipped, a new standard was being developed to allow ActiveX controls to register that they required one or more specific categories of features. This standard will allow ActiveX control containers to eliminate controls that require known, unsupported categories. These registry entries are not recognized by Visual FoxPro 5.0.