Progress
Language Reference


CONTROL-FRAME Widget

A control-frame is a field-level widget that holds an ActiveX control that you select for your application from the Progress AppBuilder. A control-frame is always created dynamically.

A control-frame has no visualization.

Progress instantiates two separate but related objects when you create a control-frame:

The widget itself provides a connection between the ActiveX control and the Progress user interface. When the widget is realized, Progress creates a COM object that provides the real ActiveX control container support. Thus, the control-frame widget provides widget attributes and methods to manage the Progress side of the interface, while the control-frame COM object provides COM object properties and methods to gain access to the control itself.

When you insert an ActiveX control into your application, the AppBuilder creates a control-frame with the CREATE Widget statement and specifies a default name (NAME attribute value) for the widget. The AppBuilder creates a design-time instance of the ActiveX control based on the control you select in the AppBuilder, making its design-time properties available to the AppBuilder. When you save your application, the AppBuilder saves the design-time instance in a separate file (with .wrx extension) for use at run time.

At run time, your application accesses the control indirectly through the control-frame widget. First, you use the COM-HANDLE widget attribute to return a component handle to the control-frame COM object. Second, you use this handle to access properties and methods of the control-frame COM object, which provide access to the ActiveX control itself.

This is a SmartViewer into which a developer, using the AppBuilder, has dropped a literal widget, a fill-in widget, and a control-frame widget. The control-frame widget holds a Crescent spin control.

ATTRIBUTES

Control-frame Widget Attributes
  1. FGCOLOR has no meaning because the ActiveX control visualization constitutes the foreground.
  2. Mapped to a corresponding control-frame COM object property.
  3. Readable only.

PROPERTIES

Control-frame COM Object Properties1
  1. Accessible using a component handle set to the control-frame COM-HANDLE attribute value.
  2. The name of an ActiveX control that is contained by the control-frame COM object.
  3. Mapped to a corresponding control-frame widget attribute.

METHODS

Control-frame Widget Methods

Control-frame COM Object Methods1
  1. Accessible using a component handle set to the control-frame COM-HANDLE attribute value.

EVENTS

Event Type
Supported
GO, END-ERROR, and HELP universal key function events
TAB and BACK-TAB navigation key function events

NOTES

SEE ALSO

The chapter on ActiveX control container support in the Progress External Program Interfaces manual.


Copyright © 2004 Progress Software Corporation
www.progress.com
Voice: (781) 280-4000
Fax: (781) 280-4095