all the controls support a rich set of programming interfaces that you can call from microsoft vbscript (visual basic scripting edition), microsoft jscript, microsoft vba (visual basic for applications), java, c++, and any other language capable of calling a dual or dispatch com interface. that means you can weave the components into a custom solution and make them look and act the way you want. i will discuss most of the important properties, methods, and events in the subsequent chapters and will cover many more of these in the chapters describing the various solutions found on the companion cd.
see also
if you are looking for a definitive reference on com, i'd recommend picking up a copy of david chappell's understanding activex and ole (microsoft press, 1996).
let's take a brief look at each of the components and discuss what kinds of solutions you can build with them. as already mentioned, the next four chapters will cover each component in more depth.
the spreadsheet component (shown in figure 1-1) is like a small version of an excel spreadsheet, complete with a spreadsheet user interface and a recalculation engine that supports nearly all the calculation functions in excel 2000. with this control, you can change or recalculate values; sort, filter, and scroll data; protect cells; and even reload the data into excel 2000 for further manipulation. the spreadsheet control can load its data from an embedded parameter or from any url that points to an excel spreadsheet saved in html file format.
figure 1-1. the spreadsheet component.
