When setting the properties of an ActiveX control, you may need or prefer to use the control's custom properties dialog box. This custom properties dialog box provides an alternative to the list of properties in the property sheet provided by the Container for setting ActiveX control properties in Design view.
Two Ways to Set Properties
The reason for the custom properties dialog box is that not all applications that use ActiveX controls provide a property sheet like the one in Microsoft Visual Basic. The custom properties dialog box provides an interface for setting key control properties regardless of the interface supplied by the hosting application.
For some ActiveX control properties, you can choose either of these two locations to set the property:
In some cases, the custom properties dialog box is the only way to set a property in Design view. This is usually the situation when the interface needed to set a property doesn't work inside the container property sheet. For example, you can't set more than one argument per property in the container property sheet.
Finding the Custom Properties Dialog Box
Not all ActiveX controls provide a custom property dialog box. To see whether a control provides this custom property dialog box, look for the Custom property in the Microsoft container sheet for this control. If the list of properties contains the name Custom, then the control provides the custom properties dialog box. If a non-Microsoft container is used, it depends on the container itself how to handle the property dialog box. For example, Citect handles this in a smart way by attaching the property dialog box of the plug-in control to its own object property page.
To the Citect users, double-clicking the ActiveX object on a page will bring the property dialog box up.
Using the Custom Properties Dialog Box
The control's custom properties dialog box is often presented as a tabbed dialog box. After you activate the property dialog box, choose the tab that contains the interface for setting the properties that you want to set.
After you make changes on one tab, you can often apply those changes immediately by clicking the Apply button (if provided). You can click other tabs to set other properties as needed. To approve all changes made in the custom properties dialog box, click the OK button. To return to the container without changing any property settings, click the Cancel button.
MeterX Control’s Property Dialog Box
MeterX control has four property pages, labelled “General”, “Configure”, “Font” and “Color”. Property pages “Font” and “Color” use Windows standard fonts and colors.