Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Adding References to COM Libraries

There could be situations in which you might be required to use COM type libraries in your .NET applications, scenario known also as COM Interop. This should be a spare scenario, because .NET and COM are such different architectures, and the second one was not born for working within the first one. Visual Studio 2010 enables you to add references to old type libraries. To accomplish this, you need to select the COM tab in the Add Reference dialog. All the registered COM type libraries will be shown within the dialog, and you can select needed components (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 Adding a reference to a COM component.

For example, you might want to include the Windows Media Player functionalities in your ...