How do I create a deployable ActiveX control?

Question

I have written a simple ActiveX control using Visual Studio 2010. I have registered this control on my development machine using regasm, and I can invoke the control in IE using Javascript's new ActiveXObject("...") functionality.

However, I now need to prepare my ActiveX control for deployment to the customer, and this is where I need assistance.

I would like to package the control so that IE simply prompts the user in the infobar to install the control.

I understand that I will need to obtain a code signing certificate so that my ActiveX control will be trusted.

My question is, what are the steps I need to work through to turn my code into a deployable unit of software? What role do CAB files, INF files, OSD files etc play in this? And how do I package up my control using Visual Studio 2010?

If there are any existing walk-through guides out there, I would be very grateful to be pointed in their direction - I haven't been able to find a comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide myself.

Many thanks.

Answer 1

If your ActiveX is a single file then you can have it downloaded to the users by setting it in the object tag

<object classid="clsid:your-dll-classid" codebase="http://someurl/your.dll" ></object>

IE will download the file if it doesn't exists on the user's system.

Answer 2

To know more about packaging ActiveX control see MSDN

Answer 3

Thanks for your answers.

I tried using the OBJECT tag as suggested above. However, although IE prompts me to download and install the control, I get a Javascript error when I try to invoke a method on the control.

Using the "Code Download Error Log Viewer", it seems that the control is not being registered because the DllRegisterServer entry point was not found. Is this a method/attribute that needs to be added to my C# code?

My control works fine if I manually register it on my local machine using RegAsm, but getting it to register using the OBJECT tag is giving me problems.

Any help would be very much appreciated.