Users Thoughts about COMCONTROLs in WinBatch

I think the idea of a separate area for posts relating to COMCONTROL is a great idea. Maybe a heading saying "For the Brave and Foolish only" [chuckle]

Its been helpful to me to think of COMCONTROL as a different sort of language feature -- its a bridge to ~some~ kinds of ~external~ software. COMCONTROL is different from all other language features in that it is *not* robust and bullet-proof. It can't be -- there are too many varied and bizarre possibilities.

But because the extraordinary promise of even the limited things it could do was so great, Wilson WindowWare bent the normally high bullet-proof-ness rule when they made COMCONTROL. I'm glad they did.

Speaking for myself, I have felt locked-out from the world of COM and ActiveX for years. Objects helped greatly, but without Events, Objects were hobbled. The COMCONTROL feature has opened up new vistas of possibility.

So far, the two objects mentioned in the helps (MSHTML and WebBrowser) work really well and are fantastically useful. And the couple libraries I've tried that were explicitly intended for use from a variety of scripting languages are working perfectly. If this is all the COMCONTROL ever did, I'd consider it a resounding success.

I expect there's going to be some bumpy times ahead as we learn the boundaries. [grin] This kind of COM works, this kind of activex doesn't, always remember to put the framistat on the defarbolator or this COM object crashes, avoid libraries from Acme Corp altogether, etc. We'll likely hear some frustrated voices, some pleading cries, some whoops of success and some thoughtful observations.

There will certainly be some COM objects that appear to be completely legitimate, but for whatever reason, wont work with COMCONTROL. Its gonna happen -- probably a bunch of times. We'll try to help each other work through it or around it, or if we can't, we'll just post a virtual "road closed" sign on that one, say "shucks", and move on to greener pastures.

I imagine Wilson people will help where they can, but they won't be tweaking COMCONTROL for every problem that arises. Mostly we will benefit from their great background knowledge. The world of COM objects is too large for Wilson to investigate more than a very few specific cases.

Article ID:   W16934

File Created: 2007:07:03:14:27:06

Last Updated: 2007:07:03:14:27:06

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Users Thoughts about COMCONTROLs in WinBatch