VBScript

ActiveX Control Pad and HTML Layout Editor

Resources

Download ActiveX Control Pad (setuppad.exe) including HTML Layout Editor

Introduction

HTML (not the new HTML extensions published by W3C) lacks the tags for precise element positioning and alignment on a page. Microsoft created the HTML Control Pad and its HTML Layout Control to allow homepages to be developed in a full frame-based WYISWYG page editor with precisely arranged or overlapped controls in it.
IE 3.0 was the first browser to support the new 2-D-style HTML layouts. It is expected that authoring tools with page layout capabilities will appear soon.

Operations

The ActiveX Control Pad is not an authoring tool, but it allows you to
- insert ActiveX controls in an existing HTML page.
- create HTML layouts and insert them in an existing page.
- incorporate VBSricpt codes in an existing page.
The HTML Layout Control ... A layout is a region on a page, where you can place ActiveX controls and save it in a separate file with an extension alx. Layouts are apart from regular .htm files and can be inserted into an existing .htm within <OBJECT> tags or embedded in multiple .htm files, as if they were ActiveX controls.
Not all the controls listed in the "Insert ActiveX Controls" dialog box (see Figure 1) are real ActiveX controls. Most of them are old OCX controls that exist in the system and they may not work with IE 3.0. To make sure, use those displayed in the "Toolbox" dialog box (see Figure 2 & 3) of the HTML Layout Control editor. Only those shown in the dialog box are no doubt ActiveX controls. By default, there are 13 ActiveX controls that come with the ActiveX Control Pad.

Figure 1

Figure 2 & 3

Additional controls can be added by double-clicking on an empty area of the "Toolbox." Similar to adding a control to the "Controlbox" in Visual Basic, the opened "Additional Control" dialog box (see Figure 4) allows more controls to be checked and added at design time. Figure 5 shows that the Microsoft Frame control and Image control are added to the "Standard" category of the "Toolbox."

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

To prevent the "Toolbox" from overcrowded, more "tabs" can be added by right-clicking on the "Toolbox" and selecting "New Page." Figure 6 shows a new "MS Internet" tab is added to include Microsoft Internet Controls.

The icon of each control can also be modified or changed by right-clicking the control and selecting the "Customize Control" function. Figure 7 shows that the color of the "Checkbox" control icon is changed from black to red.

The basic alignment tool when designing layouts is the grid. The grid size can be changed through the "HTML Layout Options" dialog box (see Figure 8):

Figure 8