P&D - Targeting various OS/browser platforms

Here's a good question - if I develop Active X controls on a Windows 2000/IE6 or Windows XP/IE6 machine using Visual Studio 6 Enterprise, will I end up with controls that only work on Windows 2000/IE6 or WindowsXP/IE6 platforms?

How do I instruct Visual Studio/P&D to produce controls that work on Windows98/IE5 machines? Am I forced to develop/compile my controls on a Windows98/IE5 machine? Clearly, different versions of bootstrap and other dependency files are required for different OS and browser platforms (I'm assuming I can't depend on a WindowsXP .DLL file when running a control on a Windows98 machine) - so how do I specify that I need Windows98/IE5 compliance when I'm developing on a WindowsNT-or-XP/IE6 machine? How do I specify that I ALSO require compliance on a WindowsXP or WindowsNT machine (or every platform from Windows98/IE5 and later)?

Thanks again from a Visual Studio newbie.

I'm curious - has no one run into this problem?

Theoretically, unless you are using API calls into regular DLLs, you aren't
supposed to have to worry about this. If it is pure ActiveX/COM, the
libraries are supposed to be cross-platform. I point out again this is in
theory. Problems that do occur usually have to be worked out on a case
by case basis. There is no general way to plan the packages for specific
win o/s targets.

Thanks for the note, Thinker. So, how do I go about getting this "worked out" if I know I'm not using anything other than regular DLLs?

Usually, it involves manually installing and registering components until
it works on a particular platform. Part of the reason why it can be so hard
is many of the necessary components might be in another installed package
most notably, Office. If I am developing a database app that connects
to an Access database, I might not realize that I need to include data
access components when installing on a computer that doesn't have
Office. IE is another problem. If I have IE 5 or higher and and include
the web browser control, taking advantage of the full object interface,
this app will fail when installed on a computer with IE4. There are so
many other examples of software interaction that it requires digging out
what packages include what components. I am sorry I don't have any
specific help for you. I know you were struggling with a downloadable
ocx. It is very difficult to debug because you can't have the full VB
development environment on every target machine for testing.