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Standard Objects and Naming Guidelines

This section describes the standard ActiveX objects, and discusses naming guidelines for creating objects that are unique to applications, especially user-interactive applications that support a multiple-document interface (MDI). If an ActiveX object is not user-interactive or supports only a single-document interface (SDI), the standards and guidelines should be adapted as appropriate.

  • Standard objects comprise a set of objects defined by Automation. You can use them as appropriate to your application. The objects described in Using Standard Objects are oriented toward document-based, user-interactive applications. Other applications (such as noninteractive database servers) may have different requirements.

  • Naming guidelines are recommendations meant to improve consistency across applications. See Naming Conventions for these recommendations.

  • Programmability interfaces provide access to an object's containing document and containing application. Accessing the Containing Document and Accessing the Containing Application describe the standards for exposing these interfaces.

This section also provides examples in a hypothetical syntax derived from Visual Basic. The standards and guidelines are subject to change.

In this section

Topic Description
Using Standard Objects
Describes the standard objects.
Naming Conventions
Choose names for exposed objects, properties, and methods that can be easily understood by users of the application.
Programmability Interfaces
Embeddable objects, including ActiveX controls, often require access to the programmability interfaces of their containers.

Automation Programming Reference