Testing Your ActiveX Control With Existing Container Applications

The most common container applications that you will want to test against your ActiveX control would be Internet browsers that support ActiveX controls such as Internet Explorer.

In order to test your ActiveX control with a browser, you will use the Debugging tab of VB's Project, Properties dialog box to indicate your control's behavior when you run it from the design-time environment.

STEP BY STEP
13.7 Testing Your ActiveX Control with a Browser

1. Make sure that your ActiveX control project is the startup project in its Project Group (only necessary if there are other projects in the Project Group).

2. Run the application. The first time you do this, the Project Properties dialog box appears with its Debugging tab selected, as in Figure 13.12. You will typically want to accept the default settings with the Start Component option button selected and the Use Existing Browser check box checked.
   
   
   FIGURE 13.12 The Debugging tab of the Project, Properties dialog box.

3. Internet Explorer will load, and an instance of your control will appear in the Internet Explorer window frame, as in Figure 13.13.
   
   
   FIGURE 13.13 Internet Explorer, running with the test control loaded.

4. Note that you can choose IE's View Source menu option to see the sample page that was created with your project's class ID, as in Figure 13.14. If you wish at this point, you could modify the HTML source to manipulate your control with, say, VBScript and further test its behavior in a Web page.
   
   
   FIGURE 13.14 Viewing the HTML source for the test Internet Explorer page created for your control.

5. If you later want to change debugging options, such as the type of container that your control runs in, then you must use the Project, Properties menu option and choose the Debugging tab.