>>You cannot instantiate the control directly. It will work fine in development, but will error out, even if it's properly installed.
>>
>>The problem has to do with a licensing issue. Drop the ActiveX control on a form, and use it to instantiate the class. This has a side benefit of allowing you to control the position of the dialog, since it's always relative to the form it's on.
>
>I found that out. I just didn't know it was a licensing issue as the crappy error message says something about insufficient memory. So I did drop it onto a form a few days ago and all is well.
>
>I guess we should all learn from MS ActiveX developers on how to do proper error messages. I think I should start saying that to my users. When an error occurs they'll get a random message:
>"Insufficient memory for this operation"
>"Problem found between chair and keyboard"
>"Program failure: improperly placed widget"
>"Program failure: not enough money sent to the developer. Send some more."
>

Alex,

ROFL! How about this idea...If we could detect when a user did something stupid: 1. Give them a message saying, "You are too stupid to use this software! Aborting... 2. Log the user name. 3. When the software tries to start the next time, show the same message.

About 10 years ago or so, I was in a meeting with some users about a new system. One of them asked, "How do you intend to idiot proof this sytem?" "Simple," I replied, "don't let idiots use it!" I then went into a rather overly long discertation about how, somewhere along the line, the user has to take some degree of personal responsibility for what they do.

More than 10 years ago, I wrote a system for Shaw that reduced the process of costing an estimate from one hour down to a couple of minutes. The system (in FPW 2.6a) is still in place and rolling merrily along. One of these days I'll get around to upgrading it (more on this later).

At the time, the people who used it, knew how to do it manually. Over the years, these people got promoted or otherwise stopped using the system. Now, the users couldn't do this job manually if their lives depended on it.

As a result, we're developing a new paradigm. It has an acronym now, and we're going to be taking it all our software. The acronym is: DGTACTFU. This stands for, Don't Give Them A Chance To F*** Up. I think this paradigm has great promise.:-)