At runtime, the control-frame itself is largely irrelevant from the end-user viewpoint. It is the ActiveX control itself that is visible and useful. In general, the control exhibits its standard behavior as if the control-frame were not there.

The control does not follow any special ABL rules except those described in the following sections. For example, edit controls do not have any of the customized ABL text editing behavior. This means that they do not abide by ABL formats or dictionary validation rules. They are not affected by any OpenEdge startup parameters including, for example, -d (Date Format), -E (European Numeric Format), and -yy (Century). You can make any format, validation, or international settings using either the control's own properties or by changing regional settings in the system control panel. You can also write ABL code to do formatting and validation for a control.

However, ABL does enforce some rules and provides ABL mechanisms that allow ActiveX controls to live more comfortably with other ABL widgets in an application.