I'm a little late on responding to this message, but I will anyway. :)

Events are a very powerful tool of ActiveX Components. I can create an object in VB that has a custom event, and I can reference that object in other environments (such as an VBA application, C++, etc.).

When I raise an event within the component, it will give each instance that exists a chance to respond to that event. The object doesn't have to know what other applications or objects are responding to it's events, and it doesn't have a reference to them. If it were a method (like a call-back method) it would have to have a reference, and then tear-down is more complex.

I would suggest obtaining Daniel Appleman's book, "Developing ActiveX Components" (or something like that). He explains it much better than I can.

BTW, on HUGE beef that I have, is that Visual Foxpro does not have the capability to respond to custom ActiveX DLL events--whether they are created in VB, VC, or whatever else. You couldn't do it in VFP5 and I've been told that you can't do it in VFP6. This is very bad considering that fact that MS says that VFP6 is more ActiveX friendly than before. I have canned potential VFP projects, because of this shortfall, and done them all in VB.