ActiveX Controls in MAXScript Rollouts
ActiveX Controls have been deprecated by Microsoft in the latest versions of the Windows operating system in favor of the DotNet framework and its controls.
While MAXScript still supports ActiveX controls, these have to be installed and registered on the system to be accessible to MAXScript.
As a replacement of ActiveX controls, MAXScript supports DotNet controls in 3ds Max 9 and higher.
Starting with 3ds Max 4, MAXScript lets the user embed ActiveX Controls in rollouts, thus expanding the number of available User Interface control types.
Examples include:
Simple controls
ActiveMovieControl Object,Calendar Control,Microsoft TreeViewCompound controls
Microsoft Excel,Microsoft Internet ExplorerAdobe AcrobatThis provides numerous possibilities in MAXScript which include:
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Embed a web browser into a rollout and then navigate the user to a web site.
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Embed an Excel spreadsheet into a rollout, extract the user entered values from cells and then create animation in Max.
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Create an ActiveMovie player through MAXScript, load an Avi file and then synchronize the animation between the rendered Avi in ActiveMovie player to animation in Max.
The technology behind this feature is a MAXScript extension plug-in (MxsActiveX.dlx) making it MAXScript capable. It does not use ParamBlock2. The plug-in adds a new type of rollout control.
The syntax is:
activeXControl <name> [ <control_type> ] [ setupEvents:<boolean> ] [ releaseOnClose:<boolean> ] [ prop1:<value> ] [ prop2:<value> ] &ldots; Parameters:
<control_type> A string to create the control.
The string must be formatted in one of the following ways:
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A Program ID such as "MSCAL.Calendar.7"
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A Class ID such as "{8E27C92B-1264-101C-8A2F-040224009C02}"
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A URL such as "http://www.microsoft.com"
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A reference to an Active document such as "file://\\Documents\MyDoc.doc"
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A fragment of HTML such as "MSHTML:
This is a line of text"
"MSHTML:" must precede the HTML fragment so that it is designated as being a MSHTML stream.
prop1:<value> prop2:<value> These are control specific keyword arguments. You can get a list of properties and their types by calling showProperties on the control.
setupEvents:<boolean> When set to true (default), event support for activeX controls will be enabled. When set to false , none of the event handlers will be called. This is useful when a control fires too many events but you are not interested in any.
releaseOnClose:<boolean> Every activeX control creates two hidden controls. Passing true here (default) will free them up and also any resources taken up by the control, and the activex properties cannot be accessed after the rollout has been closed. This is the case for window'ed controls like listview, treeview etc.
If you need to access the properties of the control after you close the rollout, then you need to pass false . This is helpful for windowless control like XML parser, FTP controls etc. See xmlio.ms for an example.
EXAMPLE
activeXControl ax "{05589FA1-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}" \ height:200 width:300 align:#left
ActiveX Controls Topics:
Accessing ActiveX Controls Indexed Properties
ActiveX Controls Cursor Access
ActiveX - Disable3ds Maxkeyboard accelerators
ActiveX COM Enums Represented as MAXScript Names
ActiveX by-reference arguments for methods and events
loadPicture for ActiveX Controls
updateWindow for ActiveX Controls
Typical ActiveX Controls And Examples
ListView ActiveX Helper Functions
ListView ActiveX Control Example
How To ... Develop a Selected Objects Inspector using ListView ActiveX Control - Part One
How To ... Develop a Selected Objects Inspector using ListView ActiveX Control - Part Two
How To ... Develop a Scene Browser using TreeView ActiveX Control - Part One
How To ... Develop a Scene Browser using TreeView ActiveX Control - Part Two
Windows Media Player ActiveX Control
Windows Media Player ActiveX Control Example
Internet Explorer ActiveX Control
Excel Spreadsheet in Internet Browser Control as Extended Viewport