Catalyst Development Corporation / ActiveX Components (ActiveX Controls, COM Objects & OLE Objects)

Catalyst Development Corporation

Catalyst Development Corporation was founded in 1995 to create and market components and applications for software developers. Today, Catalyst Development is a recognized leader in Internet component software whose award-winning products are used by thousands of corporate, government and independent developers around the world. With a talented staff of software developers, support technicians, marketing and business professionals, Catalyst remains focused on developing innovative products and dedicated to meeting the needs of our clients.

ActiveX Components (ActiveX Controls, COM Objects & OLE Objects)

Microsoft first introduced the term ActiveX in 1996 when they launched a downloadable user interface control or software component that could be used by Internet Explorer to give more interactive or active content on a Web page to the reader. ActiveX controls were a re-branded subset of OLE custom controls (OCX) or OLE controls (OCXes) that were streamlined for downloading over the Internet and that could be digitally signed for security and authentication reasons. These ActiveX downloads were also tagged or marked as being safe for scripting and safe for initialization, to help give users confidence in using them in ActiveX Internet apps, as they were less likely to start making unauthorized actions on their systems. ActiveX controls also supported threading models, such as Apartment Model Threading, to try and improve performance in a multi-user or multi-process environment.

OLE controls (OCX's) or Object Linking and Embedding controls were themselves the successor to VBX controls first introduced by Microsoft to help programmers extend the functionality and features of their Visual Basic program by buying and reusing a VBX control built by another programmer or company, with expertise in a specific area. VBXes were limited to 16 bit usage for example on Windows 3.x, OCXes were available for both 16 bit or 32 bit architectures and began being widely used as people adopted Windows 95, although most people tended to use VBXes on 16-bit systems and OCX controls or OLE components on 32-bit systems for performance reasons. OLE itself was based on earlier work by Microsoft in their Office products to allow data to be exchanged and reused as objects inside other documents or files, such as embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a Word document and updating the content of that Excel spreadsheet for display using Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). Hence the term OLE document, that is still in use today.

OLE was part of the Microsoft COM or Component Object Model, that enabled programmers to reuse software components and services in a logical and object oriented manner. COM was extended and expanded over the years to include DCOM, the Distributed Component Object Model that allowed programmers to call OLE objects or COM objects situated on other computers or servers. COM+ was added to support transaction services using technologies such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and this first appeared when Windows 2000 was launched to better support distributed transactions in more complex applications, where higher performance and throughput was required. COM has gradually become a common term used to refer to: COM, DCOM, COM+, OLE and ActiveX technologies in general.

ActiveX components can be created in a variety of object oriented programming languages, but are most commonly created using C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC), such as: MFC 4.0, MFC 4.2 and MFC 6.0. When VB 5 was released in became possible for a Visual Basic programmer to create an ActiveX component for reuse by other people and whilst most programmers claim that the best ActiveX components were written in Visual C++ or by utilizing the ActiveX Template Library, it did not stop some entrepreneurial developers from Janus Systems writing one of the bestselling ActiveX UI controls of all time in VB5 and VB6, called Janus GridEx, a VB6 ActiveX, that gives the look and feel of the Microsoft Outlook UI inside your app.

ActiveX components and ActiveX controls come with a variety of file extensions such as: .exe, .dll and .ocx and these denote a certain type of usage either in-process as part of your program or app (an ActiveX DLL), or out-of-process as a standalone executable (an ActiveX Exe), as an ActiveX control or OCX control mainly used as a UI control on a form or page. Downloadable ActiveX controls are also packaged as .cab files or Cabinet files. These CAB files are packages of files compressed to take up less space and hence can be downloaded more efficiently over the Internet.

In this ActiveX Component gallery you will find a variety of commercial products that are ActiveX objects or ActiveX controls that people sometime refer to as VB controls or as a VB object, as they are often used within Visual Basic. You will find ActiveX Windows components that allow you to carry out visuals tasks, such as an ActiveX UI control for displaying video or images, an ActiveX image control or a non-Visual ActiveX upload component that will allow you to push a file up onto a server over the Internet using HTTP or FTP protocols.

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1. ActivePatch

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Automatic Updates Product Type: Component / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Conserve bandwidth and speed update time for your applications. ActivePatch software development toolkit enables your application to reduce the size of updated files as much as 90%, significantly reducing network load and file download time. Use it to provide automatic updates for your software over the Internet, distribute modified databases over a corporate WAN, or reduce the storage requirements for archived files. ActivePatch does not depend on external tools or complicated batch files and proprietary scripting languages.
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2. SocketTools ActiveX Edition

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Internet Communication Product Type: Component / ActiveX OCX

Twenty Internet communication controls for Visual Basic, FoxPro, and PowerBuilder. SocketTools ActiveX Edition gives you the ability to provide client interfaces for application protocols such as file transfer (FTP), simple mail transfer (SMTP), post office (POP), domain name (DNS), hypertext (HTTP), and Telnet. Include extensive Internet communication in your application without being required to learn complex TCP/IP protocols.
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3. SocketTools File Transfer

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: File Transfer/Upload Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX

.NET and ActiveX components to integrate file transfer functionality into your applications. File Transfer Control combines FTP and HTTP functionality into one component that supports both standard and secure connections. You can implement the standard protocols for sending and receiving files over the Internet and corporate intranets without using multiple controls or writing additional code to interface different components. File Transfer Control has no external dependencies on third-party libraries and can incorporates the standard SSL and TLS security protocols. Included with the package is a comprehensive on-line help file, technical reference and example programs.
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4. SocketTools FTP Toolbox

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: File Transfer/Upload Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Easily upload or download files from a remote host and perform a variety of remote file management functions.SocketTools FTP Toolbox enables you to create, rename and delete files and directories, list files and search for files using wildcards. The component provides both high level methods, such as the ability to transfer multiple files in a single method call, as well as access to lower level remote file I/O methods. SocketTools FTP Toolbox includes a .NET class, ActiveX control (OCX) and library (DLL).
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5. SocketTools HTTP Toolbox

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Internet Communication Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Access web services, transfer files and submit data to server-side scripts using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). SocketTools HTTP Toolbox makes interacting with web services as simple as possible, with a single interface that offers all of the features that you need. Posting XML data, submitting form data using our virtual form methods and simply uploading and downloading files can all be done with just a few lines of code. This component supports both standard and secure connections using SSL and TLS.
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6. SocketTools IMAP Toolbox

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Internet Communication Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Manage your mailboxes remotely using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). SocketTools IMAP Toolbox enables your application to access a mailbox on a mail server, review and search messages, move and and rename mailboxes and perform a variety of other functions. Unlike the Post Office Protocol, IMAP is designed for applications that leave the mail messages on the mail server rather than downloading them and managing them locally. This component supports both standard and secure connections using the SSL and TLS security protocols.
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7. SocketTools Internet Mail

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Email Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX

.NET and ActiveX components to send and retrieve email messages. Internet Mail Control provides a comprehensive interface for sending, downloading and managing e-mail messages on a mail server. This single component supports both the Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4) for accessing e-mail messages on a server, managing them remotely and downloading them to the local system. It also supports the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for submitting e-mail messages for delivery, either directly to the recipient, or routed through a relay server.
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8. SocketTools Library Edition

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Internet Communication Product Type: Component / DLL

Twenty Internet communications libraries for C/C++, Delphi, and Visual Basic. Web page, or script. SocketTools Library Edition has over 800 functions which can be used to develop applications that meet a wide range of needs. SocketTools Library Edition covers uploading and downloading files (FTP), sending and retrieving email (SMTP, POP), remote command execution, terminal emulation and more. The Library Edition is ideal for the developer who requires the high performance, minimum resource utilization and flexibility of a lower level interface, without the inherent overhead of ActiveX controls or COM libraries. It includes standard Windows dynamic link libraries (DLLs) which can be used in a wide variety of programming languages such as Visual Studio.NET, Visual C++, Visual Basic and Delphi.
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9. SocketTools MIME Toolbox

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Email Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Manage your mailboxes remotely using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). SocketTools IMAP Toolbox enables your application to access a mailbox on a mail server, review and search messages, move and and rename mailboxes and perform a variety of other functions. Unlike the Post Office Protocol, IMAP is designed for applications that leave the mail messages on the mail server rather than downloading them and managing them locally. This component supports both standard and secure connections using the SSL and TLS security protocols.
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10. SocketTools POP3 Toolbox

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Publisher: Catalyst Development Corporation Primary Category: Email Product Type: Component / .NET Class / ActiveX OCX / DLL

Download e-mail messages from your mail server using the standard Post Office Protocol v3 (POP3). SocketTools POP3 Toolbox lets you simply download all messages and remove them from the mailbox, or you can retrieve just the headers from specific messages, enabling your program to scan the mailbox for specific types of messages. This component supports both standard and secure connections using SSL and TLS, protecting your credentials and the contents of your messages. This component supports both implicit and explicit SSL, enabling easy integration with online mail services such as Google's GMail.
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Catalyst Development Corporation / ActiveX Components (ActiveX Controls, COM Objects & OLE Objects)