Active X is an Internet-enabled version of Microsoft Corporation’s object linking and embedding (OLE) technology, which enables applications to communicate with each other utilizing message passed with the aid of the computer’s operating system.
The previous version of Active X was called Component Object Model (COM) and added features designed to enable the distribution of executable programs, called controls, via the Internet. To use these controls, a computer must be running Microsoft Windows or an OLE-enabled version of Mac OS. Unlike Java applets, which run in a protected memory region that isolates the code from the computer’s file system, controls can directly affect files. For this reason, controls are packaged with digitally signed certificates, which prove that the program emanates from a respectable software publisher that has been renamed and incorporated into Microsoft’s .Net strategy. See control, Java, .Net, virus.
Technipages Explains Activex
ActiveX controls are created with the ability to improve multimedia effects, more sophisticated interactive features to Web pages and applications. This extension being supplied by the ActiveX platform is unrestricted in its possibilities. ActiveX controls possess open access to the computer and all the operations of the operating system.
ActiveX controls are layered underneath the applications, and they have seen immense adoption by many third-party vendors as an essential framework for developing software components that require programming for use in different sectors, from either software development tool to end-user productivity tools. Although ActiveX is quite similar to Java applets, there are still some distinctive features. Applets do not have access to the Windows operating system as ActiveX controls do. Applets are also different in that they are multi-platform, i.e. they can work on multiple operating systems, while ActiveX controls are limited to the Windows operating system.
Common Uses of Activex
- The Microsoft Edge browser doesn’t support the ActiveX OLE
- One of the ways to improve security is to disable ActiveX controls by default
- The updated Microsoft windows defender has the ability to remove an already installed ActiveX software
Common Misuses of Activex
- ActiveX is popularly known with the Ubuntu operating system.
