Using Standard Objects

The following table lists the Automation standard objects. Although none of these objects are required, user-interactive applications with subordinate objects should include an Application object.

Object name	Description
Application	Top-level object. Provides a standard way for ActiveX clients to retrieve and navigate an application's subordinate objects.
Document	Provides a way to open, print, change, and save an application document.
Documents	Provides a way to iterate over and select open documents in MDI applications.
Font	Describes fonts that are used to display or print text.
Picture	Provides a language-neutral abstraction for bitmaps, icons, and metafiles.
Property Frame	The user interface mechanism that displays one or more property pages for a control.

The following illustration shows how the standard objects fit into the organization of objects provided by an application.

The following sections describe the standard properties and methods for all objects, all collection objects, and each of the standard objects. These sections list the standard methods and properties for each object, as well as the standard arguments for those properties and methods.

In this section

Topic	Description
Object Properties	Describes the properties that must be provided by all objects and collections.
Collection Object Properties	A collection provides a set of objects over which iteration can be performed.
Using the Application Object in a Type Library	Describes how to use the Application object in a type library.
Document Object Properties	If the application is document based, it should provide a Document object named Document.
Documents Collection Object	If your application supports a multiple-document interface (MDI), you should provide a Documents collection object.
The Font Object	The standard font object supports a number of read-write properties as well as a set of methods through its IFont interface.
The Picture Object	Picture objects provide a language-neutral abstraction for bitmaps, icons, and metafiles.
The Property Frame Object	Property frame objects are the user interface mechanism that displays one or more property pages for a control.

Note

You can define additional application-specific properties and methods for each object. You can also provide additional optional arguments for any of the listed properties or methods; however, the optional arguments should follow the standard arguments in a positional argument list.