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About the ActiveX Navigation Control (Windows Embedded CE 6.0)

  • Article

1/6/2010

To add the TV-Style Navigation functionality to the Internet Explorer browser, you create a windowless ActiveX control, called the navigation control, that responds to user input on a 5-key navigation device. Users press the directional and selection buttons on their device to navigate into, within, and out of the control. The navigation control appears as a yellow frame, called the focus rectangle, superimposed on the browser window. Within the focus rectangle there may also be selectable areas that the user can navigate to. These areas are called navigation rectangles.

The browser and the ActiveX control must cooperatively manage navigation both within and outside of the control. There are two different ways to do this:

  • The navigation control manages navigation and draws the focus rectangle.
  • The browser manages navigation but the navigation control draws the focus rectangle.

Two COM interfaces implement communication between the browser and the navigation control. The navigation control inherits from and implements the IOleControlNavigation2 interface and the browser implements the IOleControlNavigation2AdviseSink interface.

Knowledge of COM objects, in particular how to design and register ActiveX controls safely, is necessary to understand the topics Creating the Navigation Control and Creating the Browser Control. Additional information on developing ActiveX controls for Internet Explorer is available in the Component Development section of the MSDN Online library, at this Microsoft Web site.

Note

Windows Embedded CE does not support the apartment threading model. Therefore, to enable support for both single-threaded and multithreaded apartment types, it is important that you set the ThreadingModel registry key for your navigation control to Both. For more information on Windows Embedded CE threading model, see COM Threads and Processes.

See Also

Concepts

Customizing the Focus Rectangle

Other Resources

Internet Explorer TV-Style Navigation Application Development