## Introduction

Internet Component Download is a system service for downloading, certificate checking, and installing COM component code from the Internet. This service is used by applications (e.g. web browsers) to automatically download and install COM Objects from code repositories on the Internet. This document explains how code authors should prepare their components for automatic download. It then describes the interface for the component download mechanism, and finally provides some additional implementation details, including a description of the Internet Search Path service which allows searching for download-able code from a series of "Object Stores".

Component Download is used within Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to automatically download OLE Controls inserted inside HTML pages using the <OBJECT> element in HTML(2). The mechanism for downloading components is exposed in an API that may be used in various other OLE containers. OLE Control developers should follow the guidelines outlined below to package their controls so that they can be downloaded automatically by any container that uses the Component Download mechanism.

© 1996 Microsoft Corporation