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.
