Active documents can be viewed in a container like the Microsoft Office Binder, which provides a way to create a compound document made up of different document types like Excel, Word, and your custom document type, each of which can be edited full frame. Active documents can also be displayed in a browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, which is an Active document container. Documents can be opened in a separate application window. For the document to open, the helper application must exist on the client, or be downloaded separately before the application can run. The full version of the application can provide full editing support.
Documents are always in-place active.
Menu commands invoked from the container can be routed to your document. Documents can be viewed in a Web browser. This provides seamless integration between your documents and other Web pages. A user can browse an HTML Web page, then an Excel spreadsheet, and then to a document that you've written using MFC support for Active documents. The user can navigate using the familiar Web interface, as the browser switches seamlessly between the menus and views of an HTML page, Excel, and your application's document.