Welcome on the COM ship,
COM is an easy way (could be more easy if M$ don't hide most of the stuff) to manipulate an external component as an objectFor example, when you use $Var=Getobject("library.Object"), you retreive and handle to a clone of Object.
With $Var, you can use methods and properties of the object. They use is done in this way :
$Var.method(parameters if any)
$retreiveprop=$Var.property
$Var.property=New propery value
Method are internal object command, and can sometime return a variable (can be another object, a string, a number, ...)
Properties are here to "adapt" the object to what we need (size, path, ...).
The last part (and the hardest) is to get hand on available properties and parameters and their syntax. For Ms components, MSDN is here (msdn.microsoft.com and do a search on the library provided in Getobject)
For 3rd parties, only the manual or example will help
The most easy (common) examples to understand this are in VB script
[ 21 December 2001: Message edited by: Alex.H ]