Making Your First Active X Control in Visual Basic - Steps 1-4
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Step One: Open Visual Basic
This first step will be the easiest. So take that baby step in the right direction and open the Visual Basic program. You can do this by double clicking on the Visual Basic program icon, or by finding the program in the start menu. This will take you to a screen that asks you if you want to make a new program or open an existing one, which leads us to...
Step Two: Make a choice
If you are looking to add this brand new Active X control to a program that you are already working on, then open up that program, post haste. If, however you are just testing out your new skill (a practice run) then open a new project.
Step Three: Break down what you're making
Identify the kind of control that you will make, and what you want it to do. For the purposes of this example you are going to make a spinner box. In case you don't know what a spinner box is, picture a text box with numbers inside; next to it is a set of arrows, one is pointing up and the other is pointing down. When you click on an arrow the number in the box goes up or down. You have probably seen these before, and just not known the proper name.
Now that we know what we are making let's decide what elements we will need in order to make a spinner box. In this case we will need to have a text box and a vertical scroll bar.
Step Four: Make a container
Access the file menu in your open projects and add a new, blank Active X control. In some versions you can use the add project command option for this. Before you now should be a new blank grid for you to work with. This is the location where the real magic will happen; this is where we will make your new Active X control. This step is important because the Active X control needs a container to run properly.
Next: Steps 5-8 >>
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