Share via

Using the MMC 2.0 Message OCX Control

  • Article

This feature is introduced in MMC 1.2.

MMC provides a message OCX control that snap-ins can use for that displays messages in the result pane. The message OCX control optimizes the performance of snap-in error and warning messages and is therefore the recommended way for a snap-in to display such messages.

Snap-ins can also display messages using a modal message box. However, snap-ins should only use modal message boxes in response to a context menu action, or to alert the user of some error condition that is serious enough to warrant their use.

For messages that need only be displayed when a snap-in is selected, the best choice is to use the MMC message OCX control. The OCX control is displayed in the result pane of a snap-in, so the snap-in can only display a message using the control when it has the focus.

Typically, the message OCX should be used to inform the user of any problems the snap-in encounters when enumerating and that displays items in the result pane of the selected scope item.

The IMessageView interface allows snap-ins to interact with the message OCX control. Its methods can be used to set the text and icon of the error message displayed by the OCX control.

To use the MMC message OCX control

  1. If a snap-in wants to display a message (error message or other) for a particular scope item, it should call IConsole2::SelectScopeItem to select the item and force a call to its IComponent::GetResultViewType method.

  2. Handle selection of the OCX view in the IComponent::GetResultViewType method.

    For the MMC message OCX control, the ppViewType parameter should be computed with the following:

    StringFromCLSID (CLSID_MessageView, ppViewType);

    The StringFromCLSID function allocates the buffer and formats the string in the correct manner required by GetResultViewType.

  3. Handle the MMCN_SHOW notification message sent to the snap-in's IComponent::Notify implementation. To obtain the message OCX control's IUnknown interface pointer, call IConsole2::QueryResultView and query for the IMessageView interface.

    Using the OCX control's IUnknown interface pointer, call the methods of the IMessageView interface to modify the text and icon of the message. Be aware that the snap-in can delete the text strings and icon immediately after the calls are made to IMessageView methods.

    Upon deselection of the result pane, the arg parameter of MMCN_SHOW is set to FALSE, indicating that the OCX view is being torn down. At this time, the snap-in can do any necessary clean-up.

Using Custom OCX Controls

Using List Views