Scripting ActiveX Controls with VBScript
Improvements Make Verson 2 A Much More Powerful Scripting Tool
By Gary Cornell
At the Microsoft Site Builder conference held this past October, the rainy kingdom announced the "Active Platform," the company's strategy for implementing Active controls over the Internet. The strategy involves three core components: Active Desktop, Active Server, and ActiveX; see "
Online" for details. A key part of this platform is Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), a scripting language based on Visual Basic that allows you to (among other things) easily script ActiveX controls. VBScript enables you to create active content on the Web and allows you to link and automate a variety of objects in Web pages, including ActiveX controls and Java applets.
The original version of VBScript that shipped with Internet Explorer 3.0 was quite lightweight. Rumors floating around Microsoft say that it was hacked out by two guys over a weekend. Whether true or not, version 1.0 lacked important programming features such as constants and the ability to pass by reference. The next version of VBScript is scheduled to be included in Microsoft's "Denali" server software along with Internet Explorer 4. Recently, I had the opportunity to examine an early beta, which appears to be a far more serious programming language and scripting tool. This article gives a preview of VBScript 2 based on this early beta.
What is VBScript?
VBScript was designed to be the glue to tie together the "Active Platform" that Microsoft is pushing.
