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(Early June 1996 Beta)
June 6, 1996
The Microsoft® ActiveX™ Software Development Kit (SDK) includes a variety of technologies that Microsoft is introducing to facilitate development of Internet applications and content. By nature, the ActiveX SDK will remain a small and dynamic SDK. You will see technologies come and go through this SDK, and as they become more mature and mainstream, they will be transferred to other SDKs such as the Win32® SDK. (ISAPI is an example of that transition; it has been moved from the ActiveX SDK to the Win32 SDK.) This allows us to keep the ActiveX SDK small enough that it can continue to be downloaded from the Internet, but can still remain on the cutting edge for ISVs who need to stay focused on the most recent changes.
In upcoming releases, you will also notice that the ActiveX SDK may change slightly to reflect the technology represented by the most current product releases. For example, this release of the ActiveX SDK focuses on the recent Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 Beta 1 release, which is distributed only over the Internet.
MSIE30.EXE (the self-extracting installation package for Internet Explorer 3.0) has been removed from this SDK. This has allowed us to decrease the size of the SDK, so the SDK download file is currently under 6 MB.
The Internet Explorer 3.0 beta (MSIE30.EXE) is available for downloading from the Internet Explorer site.
Future Versions of the SDK
Paid Support for the ActiveX SDK
Free Support for the ActiveX SDK
Contents of the ActiveX SDK
Downloading the ActiveX SDK
The next version of the ActiveX SDK will focus on the Beta 1 release of "Nashville" (code name for Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0). It will be distributed online and also as a premium CD release for MSDN
members. This will allow us to include additional technologies on the CD. Over the next few months, you will see frequent releases of the ActiveX SDK, which will continue to transition to meet the needs of the Internet Explorer and Nashville beta releases.
The Microsoft Internet Development Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/) contains all of the publicly released versions of Internet-related technology and specifications. Please visit this site on a regular basis to find out more about providing feedback and receiving support for the Microsoft ActiveX SDK.
The ActiveX SDK is supported by Microsoft's AnswerPoint group (Product Support Services). You can ask questions through your Premier Level support contract. You can also ask questions through your Priority Level contract or purchase individual Priority Support incidents (essentially a one-time fee for one question). If you would like to understand more about Microsoft's paid support options, you can call Microsoft Support Sales at (800) 936-3500 from 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Pacific time, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Please note that technical support is not available through this number. AnswerPoint Information is also available on the World Wide Web at http://www.microsoft.com/support/.
Newsgroups are great places for free peer support. As time and resources allow, Microsoft developers, program managers, support engineers, and test engineers visit the newsgroups to collect feedback and answer questions or to correct misperceptions. Oftentimes they will lurk there to read feedback, but they will not become actively involved unless a specific question is asked or a misperception is observed. This largely depends on bandwidth and time, which is greatly affected by our shipping schedules. Some of the interesting newsgroups about Internet Explorer are under microsoft.public.internetexplorer.
To access newsgroups, use your preferred newsgroup reader and enter the news server address as msnews.microsoft.com.
Or, you can use the following URL to access the newsgroups directly from a Web browser: news:microsoft.public.newsgroup-name.
The newsreader that is included with Internet Explorer version 3.0 supports multiple news servers; if you have Internet Explorer 3.0 installed, you can download the newsreader from http://www.microsoft.com/ie/imn/.
Mailing lists provide another good form of free peer support. Additionally, this is where Microsoft will make early announcements of information on a given topic. Again, it is peer support, and Microsoft staff will often lurk there but will not send mail unless a specific question is asked. To learn more about mailing lists, please see the Mailing Lists page in the Resources section of this site.
For more information and to review specific documents included in each section, see the ActiveX SDK Overview after you download the SDK.
Note: Since the March release of the Microsoft ActiveX SDK, many of the documents below have changed, and the list has grown in response to feedback from customers and partners. Many of these documents are still preliminary specifications and are subject to further change as we receive more feedback from developers and partners.
Please visit the ActiveX SDK
download page.