COM visible dll as ActiveX Object

Question

What is a COM visible .net 2.0 dll? (I have got one)
Can I register this dll to the windows registry and use it as an ActiveXObject?

For all the dll's registered in registry (HKCR) that have the child node InprocServer32, are accessible with the ProgID through ActiveX?

[I am new to this]
Thank you.

Answer 1

• a COM visible .Net dll exposes one or more managed classes for COM clients to instantiate through CoCreateInstace API.

• an ActiveX control is a COM object that implements a set of well-known interface and can be instantiated in-proc and activate in-place by it's host. ProgID on the other hand is just a human-"readable" (you should see some ProgIDs :-)) identifier of a particular COM object. ProgID is not required and is not tied to ActiveX particularly; not all ActiveX controls have ProgIDs, and some non-ActiveX COM objects have ProgID as well.