> What does 'Private WithEvents Frm
> as Form1' do?

  That's to use in the class of your DLL if you want to trap
form events. The "Frm" variable was meant to be a variable
in your DLL class, not the variable for your object within
the main project.

> What is a COM interface?

Component Object Model. A COM object is registered
in HKCR, along with its type library. A COM object also has a
specific structure, such that the type library can be accessed and
functions in the COM object can be discovered based on what's
in that type library. A VB DLL is an ActiveX DLL, which is
a COM DLL.

   COM is basically ActiveX, though the definitions are murky
because they're as much marketing as they are technical terms.
A fun quote from "The Essence of COM", a book by a notably
cranky author by the name of David S. Platt:

   " The term ActiveX is another winner....the term "ActiveX" has no
technical meaning whatsoever, although it did have several
different meanings at various times. It is today a branding prefix, the
same as the letters "Mc" in front of all the food at the restaurant
with the golden arches."

  The Object Browser is actually a COM object browser. It reads
COM object type libraries and displays what it finds. That's as
opposed to non-COM DLLs like shell32.dll or kernel32.dll, for
which there's no "self-documenting" functionality. With those you
just have to know the function that you want. That's why there's
"intellisense" for components added to your project but not for
kernel32.dll, even though you may have declared a kernel32.dll
function. You can get the function parameters popup for that
because VB knows it from your declare, but you can't get an
intellisense listbox menu because kernel32.dll doesn't "expose"
a COM interface to know it's functions.

> And that works OK.  Now I would like the DLL to be a MDI child form to be
> called into my (obviously) MDI parent.  When I try to do this it craps
> itself (it can't find a MDI parent form).  Is there any way around this?
>

    Why would you put a form inside a DLL if you want it to be
an MDI child? I don't understand what you're trying to achieve.
The point of the DLL is that you can package functionality and
make it easily accessible with a COM interface. The form inside
your DLL is only accessible to the extent that you've provided public
methods in the DLL class(es) that can act on it in some way.
That form has no relation to an MDI form in your project.

    In case it's any help, I've got sample DLL code with a form
in it:
   http://www.jsware.net/jsware/zips/dllsamp.zip
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