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Lesson 1 -Building Your First Windows Application

1.1 : Creating a Windows Application

1.2 : Creating a Dialog-Based Application

1.3 : Creating DLLs, Console Applications, and More
1.4 : Changing Your AppWizard Decisions
 1.5 : Understanding AppWizard’s Code
 1.6 : Understanding a MDI Application
 1.7 : Understanding the Components of a Dialog-Based Application

Lesson 2 - Dialogs and Controls

2.1 : Understanding Dialog Boxes

2.2 : Creating a Dialog Box Resource
 2.3 : Writing a Dialog Box Class
 2.4 : Using the Dialog Box Class
Lesson 3 - Messages and Commands

3.1 : Understanding Message Routing

3.2 : Understanding Message Loops
 3.3 : Reading Message Maps
 3.4 : Learning How ClassWizard Helps You Catch Messages
 3.5 : Recognizing Messages
 3.6 : Understanding Commands
 3.7 : Understanding Command Updates
 3.8 : Learning How ClassWizard Helps You Catch Commands and Command Updates

Lesson 4 - Documents and Views

4.1 : Understanding the Document Class

4.2 : Understanding the View Class

4.3 : Creating the Rectangles Application
 4.4 : Other View Classes

4.5 : Document Templates, Views, and Frame Windows

Lesson 5 - Drawing on the Screen

5.1 :Understanding Device Contexts
 5.2 : Introducing the Paint1 Application
 5.3 : Building the Paint1 Application
 5.4 : Scrolling Windows
 5.5 : Building the Scroll Application
Lesson 6 - Building a Complete Application: ShowString

6.1 : Building an Application That Displays a String
 6.2 : Building the ShowString Menus
 6.3 : Building the ShowString Dialog Boxes
 6.4 : Making the Menu Work
 6.5 : Making the Dialog Box Work
 6.6 : Adding Appearance Options to the Options Dialog Box
Lesson 7 -  Status Bars and Toolbars

7.1 : Working with Toolbars
 7.2 : Working with Status Bars
Lesson 8 - Common Controls

8.1 : The Progress Bar Control
 8.2 : The Up-Down Control
 8.3 : The Image List Control
 8.4 : The List View Control
 8.5 : The Tree View Control
 8.6 : The Rich Edit Control
 8.7 : The Date Picker Control
 8.8 : Month Calendar Control
 8.9 : Scrolling the View
Lesson 9 - Property Pages and Sheets

9.1 : Introducing Property Sheets
 9.2 : Creating the Property Sheet Demo Application
 9.3 : Running the Property Sheet Demo Application
Lesson 10 - ActiveX Concepts

10.1 : The Purpose of ActiveX

10.2 : Object Linking

10.3 : Object Embedding
 10.4 : Containers and Servers
 10.5 : Toward a More Intuitive User Interface
 10.6 : The Component Object Model  

10.7 : Automation
 10.8 : ActiveX Controls

Lesson 11 -  Building an ActiveX Control

11.1 : Creating a Rolling-Die Control

11.2 : Displaying the Current Value

11.3 : Reacting to a Mouse Click and Rolling the Die 

 11.4 : Creating a Better User Interface
 11.5 : Generating Property Sheets
Lesson 12 - Database Access

12.1 : Understanding Database Concepts

12.2 : Creating an ODBC Database Program
 12.3 : Choosing Between ODBC and DAO
 12.4 : OLE DB

Lesson -10 : ActiveX Concepts
10.7 -Automation

An Automation server lets other applications tell it what to do. It exposes functions and data, called methods and properties. For example, Microsoft Excel is an Automation server, and programs written in Visual C++ or Visual Basic can call Excel functions and set properties like column widths. That means you don’t need to write a scripting language for your application any more. If you expose all the functions and properties of your application, any programming language that can control an Automation server can be a scripting language for your application. Your users may already know your scripting language. They essentially will have no learning curve for writing macros to automate your application (although they will need to learn the names of the methods and properties you expose).

The important thing to know about interacting with automation is that one program is always in control, calling the methods or changing the properties of the other running application. The application in control is called an Automation controller. The application that exposes methods and functions is called an Automation server. Excel, Word, and other members of the Microsoft Office suite are Automation servers, and your programs can use the functions of these applications to really save you coding time.

For example, imagine being able to use the function called by the Word menu item Format, Change Case to convert the blocks of text your application uses to all uppercase, all lowercase, sentence case (the first letter of the first word in each sentence is uppercase, the rest are not), or title case (the first letter of every word is uppercase; the rest are not).

The description of how automation really works is far longer and more complex than the interface summary of the previous section. It involves a special interface called IDispatch, a simplified interface that works from a number of different languages, including those like Visual Basic that can’t use pointers. The declaration of IDispatch is shown in Listing 10.2.

Listing 10.2 IDispatch, Defined in \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include\oaidl.h

MIDL_INTERFACE("00020400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")

IDispatch : public IUnknown

{

public:

virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE GetTypeInfoCount(

/* [out] */ UINT __RPC_FAR *pctinfo) = 0;

virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE GetTypeInfo(

/* [in] */ UINT iTInfo,

/* [in] */ LCID lcid,

/* [out] */ ITypeInfo __RPC_FAR *__RPC_FAR *ppTInfo) = 0;

virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE GetIDsOfNames(

/* [in] */ REFIID riid,

/* [size_is][in] */ LPOLESTR __RPC_FAR *rgszNames,

/* [in] */ UINT cNames,

/* [in] */ LCID lcid,

/* [size_is][out] */ DISPID __RPC_FAR *rgDispId) = 0;

virtual /* [local] */ HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Invoke(

/* [in] */ DISPID dispIdMember,

/* [in] */ REFIID riid,

/* [in] */ LCID lcid,

/* [in] */ WORD wFlags,

/* [out][in] */ DISPPARAMS __RPC_FAR *pDispParams,

/* [out] */ VARIANT __RPC_FAR *pVarResult,

/* [out] */ EXCEPINFO __RPC_FAR *pExcepInfo,

/* [out] */ UINT __RPC_FAR *puArgErr) = 0;

};

Although IDispatch seems more complex than IUnknown, it declares only a few more functions: GetTypeInfoCount(), GetTypeInfo(), GetIDsOfNames(), and Invoke(). Because it inherits from IUnknown, it has also inherited QueryInterface(), AddRef(), and Release(). They are all pure virtual functions, so any COM class that inherits from IDispatch must implement these functions. The most important of these is Invoke(), used to call functions of the Automation server and to access its properties.

 

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