vbAccelerator UserControl COM Support Library

Create Truly Professional VB COM controls and objects

The vbACOM library is a DLL designed to allow Visual Basic control developers the same flexibility available to control developers using "lower level" languages. The way that the library provides this flexibilty is through exposing the COM interfaces that are supported by all ActiveX controls, but are kept hidden from the VB developer.

Although this "behind the scenes" automatic handling of some of the more tricky aspects of COM programming is one of the greatest strengths of VB, it can also hamper the developer who needs to get down to the bare bones and do some really hardcore stuff.

About the Download

The vbACOM download is a full installation product which will install all of the vbACOM source code, Type Libraries, binaries and a full Help File. All code provided is for VB6: however, you can also use the same code with VB5 if you download the VB5 Binary of vbACOM and register it.

Supported COM Interfaces

The library exposes the following interfaces:

• IPerPropertyBrowsingVB
  This interface allows developers to implement dynamic drop down lists for property values in property browsers that support it (such as the VB property browser). Although VB allows this in a limited way, through the use of the Enum data type, it offers no way to create dynamic lists such as a list of controls present on a form.
• IOleObjectVB
  This interface allows developers to interact with the container of the control. Uses of this interface include requesting the container to provide context-sensitive pop-up menus for the control, and automatically limiting the size of the control to predefined dimensions (useful for controls that are "invisible at run time", but show an icon representing the control at design-time).
• IOleInPlaceActiveObjectVB
  This interface allows developers to interact with the container of the control. Uses of this interface include specifying non-standard behaviour for system "hot-keys", such as the Escape, Enter, and Tab keys.
• IOleControlVB
  This interface allows developers to interact with the container of the control. Uses of this interface include full customisation of the mnemonic support provided for controls. (Although VB does provide support for mnemonics, it is very limited.)
• IEnumVariantVB
  This interface, although not strictly a control-specific interface, allows control developers to create their own collection objects without having to resort to wrapping the standard VB collection object.