ODE97: New Features in Microsoft Office 97 Developer Edition Tools

MORE INFORMATION

ODE Tools offer the following new features compared with ADT 7.0:

Setup Wizard

• A new Tips button on the initial screen of the Setup Wizard helps you avoid common problems and mistakes creating setup images with the Wizard.
• The ODE Tools Setup Wizard supports the use of dependency files (.dep), which makes it easier to redistribute ActiveX controls by automatically including required ActiveX support files with your application.

New ActiveX Controls

• The Animation control allows you to create buttons on your forms that display animation (.avi files).
• The Winsock control provides access to Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to allow you to stream data between two computers using TCP/IP protocol.
• The Internet Transfer control provides access to HTTP and FTP Internet protocols so you can connect to World Wide Web servers to retrieve HTML documents and upload or download files on FTP servers.

NOTE: The Data Outline control is not included with Microsoft Office 97 Developer Edition Tools; however, an updated control for Microsoft Access 97 is available free from the Microsoft Download Center. For information about obtaining the updated Data Outline control, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Replication Manager

• The ODE Tools Replication Manager allows synchronization via the Internet or an intranet.
• You can use Synchronizers (formerly Transporters) to synchronize replicated databases directly if both replicas to be synchronized can be opened at the same time. Using a Synchronizer to manage a network dropbox folder for indirect synchronization is still an option.
• Improved user interface allows you to view any replicated database in the Synchronization window. You can also see the status and history of replicas managed by other Synchronizers or replicas that are not managed by any Synchronizer.

Source Code Control

• ODE Tools supports the use of version control (also known as source code control) software, such as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe version 5.0. Version control software gives developers the ability to track and maintain changes within their source code, and is often used on projects where multiple programmers work on source code simultaneously.

Other New Features

• The Microsoft ODE Tools Sampler contains technical information and code samples from the Microsoft Developer Network.
• The Replication Manager White Paper discusses how to create and manage replicated databases.
• The Source Code Control White Paper provides an overview of the source code control component of ODE Tools.
• Improved Help Workshop for creating custom Help files for your application.
• Microsoft Office 97 Visual Basic Programmer's Guide and Building Applications with Microsoft Access 97 user manuals.