ActiveX controls are software components that provide dynamic features on your pages. For example, a stock ticker control could be used to add a live stock ticker to a page, or an animation control could be used to add animation features. For more detailed information about ActiveX controls, and to see a gallery of free controls that are available on the World Wide Web, visit http://activex.microsoft.com/
In the FrontPage Editor, you insert an ActiveX control into your page on the Insert menu by pointing to Advanced and then clicking ActiveX Control or Design Time Control. To insert a control, you must first have it installed on your machine. If you choose the ActiveX Control command and the Pick a Control dropdown list in the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box is empty, you do not yet have any ActiveX controls installed on your system.
After you pick the control to insert, you can adjust the control’s settings in the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box. For example, all standard size and alignment options for objects that can be placed on a page are available. You can also specify an Alternate Representation that users will see if their Web browser does not support ActiveX controls.
Once you’ve picked an ActiveX control from the Pick a Control dropdown list in the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box, you can set control-specific options by clicking Properties, in the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box. This opens a dialog box with options that are specific to the ActiveX control that you want to insert. As you change the control-specific values, you can click Apply to immediately see the impact of those changes on the appearance of the ActiveX control. Some ActiveX controls also come with documentation that describes the control’s properties.
The ActiveX Control Properties dialog box includes a Network Location section. You can use this section to specify where a Web browser should look on the World Wide Web for the ActiveX control or its associated data if the control is not yet installed on the user’s computer. This is often the Web site of the ActiveX control’s vendor or your own Web site.