Re: Ordinary Controls vs. Activex controls. Do you agree?

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If the control is used in a single app, as most of my controls are, there is no reason to
go to all the elaborate effor to create an ActiveX control. It is not clear that the
ability to manipulate the properties of a control at design time are meaningful unless you
are creating a control which is a product and exists for the purpose of being a control
that many people can use in a variety of contexts. If it is a control just for your app,
the issue of "efficiency" is mostly an issue of what is most efficient of your time as a
programmer.

It is true that ordinary controls can be faster than ActiveX control, as if the time
difference had the slightest significance. Anyone who argues about "efficiency" at this
level is out of touch with most known forms of reality.

I fail to see what a .lib and header file have to do with any known form of security. Note
that to use an ActiveX control, you need a header file; the only difference is the header
file is created from the type library, which has EXACTLY the same information that an
ordinary control encodes in a header file, so the whole argument strikes me as silly.
Probably the result of someone not having a clue about what ActiveX is giving you bad
information.

I have no IDEA how I would use a .lib and header file to do something "illegal" that could
not be done to an ActiveX control.

It is not clear that either the flexibility argument or the performance argument make
sense, and therefore I think they can be safely ignored as compelling arguments. Remember
that the *drawing* of a control can take millions of instructions, so saving thirty
instructions at the interface doesn't seem to be particularly meaningful.

I suspect that all the information you have is the result of someone who is fairly
clueless about either security or performance passing on some garbled rumor about what is
going on.
joe


On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:48:02 -0700, sawer <sawer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi

If you had to write a custom control for your application, which type of
control would you write?Activex or Ordinary?

I think the advantage of activex is:

-If the control activex, developer can adjust its property, events using
IDE( I mean Properties window). But we can't use this feature for ordinary
controls.

Advantages of choosing ordinary controls (I am not sure if these are
completely right)

-I heard that ordinary MFC controls are faster than activex.

-Also if someone get your ocx control, he/she can use it without lib and
header file. But ordinary controls must be shipped with lib and header file.
So control writers can protect illegal use of his control by writing ordinary
controls.

If flexibility is important writing Activex controls must be chosen.
and
If performance is important writing ordinary MFC control must be chosen.

Do you agree?

And, i searched for controls, there are so many firms that sell .NET
controls but i couldn't see anyone advertise activex controls.(for example
http://www.dundas.com/Products/index.aspx ). What is wrong with
native(unmanaged) control development? For example why didn't Dundas write
and sell MFC Chart controls only .NET?
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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