Need new approach...

Hello,

I have an application that consists of an MDI form that runs MDI child forms within it. Depending on a menu selection off of the main MDI form, I simply load one of my MDI child forms "inside" my main form.

The problem I have is any time I need to make one program change, I need to recompile my whole application and re-deploy. I have over 100 MDI child forms. I realize this may not have been the best approach from the start, but oh well!

What I'd like to do is keep my main MDI "menu" form (or something similar if I can't use an MDI form) and re-design my MDI child forms to be individual .exe files. Then I'd like to run these exe files inside the main MDI form. Is this possible? I can't find any examples. If not, how else can I accomplish running one exe inside my main menu so that my main menu is behaving as a container for all the exe's that I launch?

Thanks so much for your help on this....

Stephanie

i've seen this done before, but never done it myself, so I couldn't advise you on how to actually DO it, but...

I think you can create each "form" as an activeX control and just redeploy the control in the same way you would the individual exe you described. like I say, never done it, and maybe i'm making this up as I go along, but I think I've seen other programs that do this... mind you, i've no eperience with activex so maybe it is an even bigger deployment nightmare than you are currently experiencing.

good luck

It sounds like you may be able to use a "plugins" sort of approach. ActiveX is one way to handle it. Try searching for terms relating to this and see what you find.