The JavaBeans^TM Bridge for ActiveX

Goals for Release 1.0 of the JavaBeans Bridge for ActiveX

JavaSoft has made available the beta 5 release of the JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX. This beta 5 is intended to allow developers to do initial testing of their beans with the ActiveX bridge, and to allow testing of the bridge with a variety of different OLE/COM/ActiveX container applications.

The main goal for Release 1.0 of the JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX is to provide users of legacy OLE/COM/ActiveX containers such as Word or Visual Basic with the ability to embed and use portable JavaBeans components in the same way they would previously embed and use platform-specific OLE/COM/ActiveX components.

This means that component developers can safely construct and deploy advanced, platform-independent JavaBeans components with the knowledge that they will also be fully usable inside of legacy applications.

See new features and changes in Beta 5 of the JavaBeans Bridge for ActiveX.

What's in the JavaBeans Bridge for ActiveX?

• A GUI packager utility that creates OLE type library information and win32 registry information for a selected JavaBean. This allows OLE/COM containers to correctly analyze and present a Bean. So for example, a Bean's properties will be correctly presented in a Visual Basic property sheet.
• Beans can fire events that can be caught by OLE/COM/ActiveX containers. This allows, for example, a Bean to fire an event that is caught by a Visual Basic script.
• Beans can act as servers for OLE/COM/ActiveX method invocation. This means that tools such as Visual Basic can invoke methods on Beans.

These technologies support the standard requirements for ActiveX components running inside of containers such as Internet Explorer, Word, or Visual Basic.

Please note that there are repaint glitches in Visual Basic while running certain Beans in Design Mode. Use Visual Basic "Run Mode" to get an actual view of your JavaBeans.

Upcoming Features

We expect to quickly distribute additional releases of the JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX, based on input we receive from the developer community. Here are the list the features you can expect to receive:

• Additional packaging support will be added so that developers can deliver beans that will be automatically installed in a target Win32 system during setup.
• Conversion support for .gif icons to Win32 icon format, for automatic conversion.

Beyond Release 1.0

The JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX Release 1.0 provides all the features required by typical ActiveX components.

However, JavaSoft will continue to work with the developer community to identify any additional features that are required for supporting Beans inside OLE/COM/ActiveX containers.

For example, typical ActiveX components act as sources for OLE/COM events and as servers for OLE/COM method calls, since it is the containers which typically catch events, and it is scripts which typically invoke methods. However, under some circumstances it may be useful for Beans to be able to directly invoke OLE/COM methods or to directly catch OLE/COM events (though the latter in particular seems very unlikely). However, if wider support for either catching events or firing method invocations should become necessary, JavaSoft will add this in future versions of the bridge.

Installing the JavaBeans^TM Bridge for ActiveX

The beta 5 release of JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX requires you to have installed the final release or later of JDK 1.1.

The supported systems are:

• Windows 95 update 1,
• Windows NT 4.0 for intel.

To install the JavaBeans bridge for ActiveX click on the following link and use your browser to save ActiveX1_0b5.exe into a local disk file:

• ActiveX1_0b5.exe (1.6 Megs)

After copying, you can install the release by double-clicking on the activex1_0b5.exe file. This will bring up a standard Windows InstallShield installer.

An introduction to the release is available in readme.html.

Use the Bug Report page (on the JavaSoft web site) to report bugs in the JavaBeans Bridge for ActiveX.