iGrid Control - Compatibility
Main information
iGrid is fully compatible with all releases of the Windows OS including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It was tested and works well in Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista and Windows 7.
iGrid is developed entirely in the MS Visual Basic 6 development environment, but internally it also widely uses native Windows API calls to get the maximum performance on the Windows platform.
All the iGrid constituent parts are automatically drawn using visual styles in such systems as Windows XP, 2003 or Vista when visual styles are turned on for the entire system and your application uses them (optionally you can prohibit this in iGrid).
Required files
To use iGrid in your end-user application, you just need the VB6 run-time support library installed in your system (the main file is MSVBVM60.DLL). This is not a problem for many latest versions of MS Windows as they are supplied with this lib - for instance, that's true for Windows XP, but in any case you can always get the redistributable package of VB6 run-time library from Microsoft's Downloads site or from this one for free.
The functionality of the iGrid control also depends a little bit on the versions of Windows Shell DLL (SHELL32.DLL) and Windows Common Controls Library (COMCTL32.DLL) every version of Windows has, but you may find that just two insignificant features, flat scroll bars and immediate column resizing with its header, do not function only in Windows 95 and only with Internet Explorer 3.x installed in it. If you have a later version of Windows or IE, you are able to use all the features of iGrid.
Using iGrid in non-VB6 development environments
iGrid OCX is compiled with VB6 IDE as a full-featured ActiveX control, and in theory can be used in any development environment that supports ActiveX controls. However, you should test iGrid OCX comprehensively in a non-VB6 environment before you buy it because some environments can use ActiveX in its own way (like MS Visual FoxPro - read more about it below). We shortly describe below the use of iGrid in such environments.
MS Office VBA 97/2000/XP/2003/2007/2010
iGrid OCX works well both in MS Word/Excel UserFroms and on MS Access forms, and can be easily used in VBA code except one event, ScrollBarThicknessChanged. It does not work in UserForms due to some API restrictions in them (the event's implementation relies on the functionality of the container), but if you are not developing an application that should react on the changes of the scroll bar thickness through the corresponding Control Panel applet in the Windows OS, you may consider you have the full functionality of iGrid.
The only exclusion is the 64-bit versions of MS Office. With the release of the 64-bit version of MS Office 2010, Microsoft abandoned the whole world of legacy 32-bit COM ActiveX components. They say that "Existing 32-bit ActiveX controls, both third-party and Microsoft-supplied, are not compatible with the 64-bit version of Office 2010." (more info can be found in this MSDN article in the section "ActiveX Control and COM Add-in Compatibility".
Unfortunately, iGrid ActiveX is built using Visual Basic 6 which does not allow to build 64-bit code, and we think we will never see 64-bit iGrid ActiveX because of that. This means that you will need to use only the 32-bit versions of MS Office if you wish to work with iGrid ActiveX.
MS Visual C++ 5.0-10.0
iGrid can be used in MS VC++ like any other ActiveX control. Just take into account the fact that you need to write a little bit more code to access the iGrid members than in Visual Basic as iGrid are totally a COM technology based control.
MS Visual FoxPro 5.0-7.0, 8.0 and 9.0
The iGrid control can be used in the forms of the two latest versions of MS Visual FoxPro - 8.0 and 9.0. However, we recommend that you test the control thoroughly in VFP before you buy it as iGrid had some problems with the scroll bars drawing in the earlier versions 5.0-7.0. Most likely, it was an internal error in VFP that did not allow us to use the standard Win32 API scroll bars in iGrid, and it was fixed in the latest versions of VFP because the same control works in them without any changes from our side.
Borland Delphi 2.0-7.0, 2007-2011
A couple of our testers tried to use our grid in Delphi forms, but they had the same problems as in MS VC++. To use an ActiveX control in Delphi, you need to deal with its type library and transform VB syntax using the COM control interface. Moreover, COM data types (such as Variant) are not native to Delphi, and you will get additional problems with them if you want to use iGrid in Delphi. Delphi programmers also say that VB is the ideal development environment for iGrid.
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