Types of Active X Control Components

ActiveX drives many unseen processes on your computer and the Web.

You may not hear as much about ActiveX components as you do other technologies. ActiveX components usually operate in the background. Users may sometimes see them when visiting a website that uses ActiveX. ActiveX components run exclusively on Microsoft systems and require a host container in which to operate. Microsoft created several types of ActiveX components.

Code Components

Windows introduced a technology called "Object Linking and Embedding," or OLE, in 1990. This allowed applications and documents to share resources and data. Microsoft later expanded upon that technology and created ActiveX. ActiveX allows developers to build reusable code component libraries. Components in these libraries allow programmers to use them as building blocks inside their applications. For example, one company might market a library of buttons that animate when you click them. Programmers who purchase these buttons can add them to their applications. Reusability is one of the key benefits of using ActiveX code component libraries.

ActiveX Objects

Applications such as Windows Access and Microsoft Word function as standalone desktop programs. You launch them, and a user interface appears. These Microsoft Office applications also support ActiveX. Word, Excel and other Office products provide ActiveX objects that developers can use to access those programs. For example, a group of programmers might wish to add word-processing capabilities to their application. Instead of coding one from scratch, they can grab an ActiveX version of a Microsoft Word object and drag it into their application. When they run their application, it displays a fully functional version of Word. Microsoft's Visual Studio development environment contains many similar ActiveX objects that programmers can use by adding them to their code.

ActiveX Documents

ActiveX documents allow developers to create interactive Web applications. For example, a programmer might create a signup form that other programmers can place on their Web pages. ActiveX documents are not as common as they were when Visual Basic 6 was the predominant programming language. Developers can also use ActiveX documents as ActiveX code components.

ActiveX Controls

The Internet Explorer browser supports ActiveX. It allows users to add third-party ActiveX controls to their browsers. Vendors create these controls for multiple reasons. One ActiveX control might allow users to play games when they install it. Others may give Web surfers the ability to paint or listen to music inside the browser. By default, an ActiveX control cannot install in a user's browser unless the user gives the control permission to do so. This insures that malicious websites cannot add software to a browser without a user's knowledge. Internet Explorer has a security panel that allows users to override that setting. Microsoft does not recommend lowering IE's ActiveX security.

References

• Microsoft MSDN: Types of ActiveX Components
• Indiana University: Information Technology Services: What are ActiveX and ActiveX controls?
• Microsoft MSDN: ActiveX Controls Architecture (COM)

Resources

• Microsoft: Change Internet Explorer Security Settings