Object selection dialog

Object selection dialog (or Directory service Object Picker) can be useful when you need to change user right on file system or SQL server. I never used it before and it took me some time to find the right code, which works in Access and VB - Object picker with dispcallfunc.

Using the Windows 2000/XP Object Selection Dialog article helps to understand parameters of dialog, and Active-Directory-Object-Picker is a .Net version of dialog.

Automate any browser with Selenium VBA

You can easy use Internet Explorer to do web tasks from your code, like screen-scraping or filling forms. But other browsers do not have COM interface, so Selenium VBA let you do such tasks with other browsers as well. Basically it provides a COM interface to the popular Selenium web testing tool. What you can do with Selenium VBA:

• Automate repetitive web browser tasks.
• Quickly fill a web form multiple times with data from your table.
• Extract data from a web page into custom table.
• Take screenshots of a Web site and save them in a PDF file.
• Use the selenium automation framework .

Build your own Object Browser

Sometimes people ask – how to get a list of methods or events of some ActiveX DLL or control, or just any COM library. VB6 (and perhaps earlier versions) was shipped with TLBINF32.DLL - TypeLib Information Object Library, which you can use in Access or any other VBA host. And MSDN article Visual Basic: Inspect COM Components Using the TypeLib Information Object Library helps to understand basics of this library usage, you can also download Help Files for Tlbinf32.dll.

Image magic with ImageMagick

Recently I made an activex control to measure PDF floor plan (see below). The most difficult thing was to load PDF in picturebox. Fortunately I found ImageMagick library, which can not only convert almost any graphic file to another, but also process images whatever way you like: resize, rotate, add shapes, animate, special effects, etc, ect. Very cool staff, check it out!

Technorati tags: ImageMagick, PDF