A wide variety of ActiveX controls are available in the Visual Basic market, but many of them do not work in Access. ActiveX controls extend the functionality of Access and let you add features you'd otherwise not be able to get in Access.
Total Access Components, another FMS product, provides a useful collection of ActiveX controls, specifically designed for use within Access forms and reports. The product includes 28 ActiveX controls. The controls shipped with the product include the following:
About box
AVI
Bitmap effects
Borders
CD player
Clipboard
Clock
Common dialog boxes
Digital display
Enhanced buttons
Gauge
Icon menu
INI file
Marquee
Notes
Pop-up menu
Progress meter
Registry
Resizer
Slider
Spin button
Splitter
System info
Tab strip
Text effects
Timer
Multimedia controls
Wave
The form resizer and splitter bars are particularly powerful, and let you easily add these features to your forms. The visual controls such as rotated text, enhanced tabs, marquees, and bitmap animation also give your databases a professional touch. A royalty-free runtime license lets you distribute these controls to all your users.
Figures 31.13 and 31.14 show examples from the demo database that ships with Total Access Components. The examples incorporated in the sample database illustrate the rich array of controls included in the product. The sample database provides you with well-documented sample code that you can drop right into the applications that you build. I think that you will find the controls to be both powerful and easy to use.