Talk:ActiveX

This is one of the worst wiki pages I've read in a long time. It is muddled, confused, and makes no attempt to describe the technology only its defects of which there are a few. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.223.234.100 (talk) 14:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

They introduced these controls in mid-1990? When there was no Internet Explorer? Hmm? 74.99.6.194 22:59, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Fixed.--202.77.13.1 05:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. Does it mean late 1990, or late 1990s? I changed it to the latter. Nousernamesleft 18:43, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Yikes - The entire ActiveX article was incorrect from beginning to end! ActiveX the name for a object that inherits from IDispatch. That's it. Nothing more, nothing related to Internet Explorer, nothing related to Visual Basic or sticking a chart into Excel.

Take a look at the official documentation.

One of the most common use of ActiveX, and the most visible to end users, is hosting specialized ActiveX plugin controls into Internet Explorer. This is just a use of the ActiveX technology, not ActiveX itself. The article on "ActiveX Controls" appears to be a little more acurate. I would suggest merging the ActiveX article with OLE Automation and redirecting ActiveX there. OLE Automation objects are called ActiveX objects. There's no ActiveX technology per-se, it's just the name of an automation object!

ShadowChaser 22:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

ActiveX controls can also be developed in many other languages, most notably Delphi. Can someone please update this page.

41.242.217.166 10:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Lack of FireFox and Opera Support

Should be something mentioned about this because it does affect the developer's choice in using ActiveX controls in a webpage and thus affects the product.

When I began using FF I noticed some issues with it because of web designers using AxtiveX but now I rarely, if ever, see it. Krozar (talk) 01:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, Mozilla would never adopt it even if MS licensed ActiveX control technology unless it is open source. Even if MS does make the technology open source, Firefox and Opera won't include it abusing ActiveX controls of being insecure. So it isn't exactly "lack of support" entirely from Microsoft. Just my two cents :) - xpclient ^Talk 14:26, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

This issue seems well explained in the article -- FF doen not inlcude activex plugins because FF is multiplatform and activex is windows only. Not because it is not open source -- Java, Flash, etc are closed but multiplatform.--BBird (talk) 16:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Not informative

I have always read that ActiveX is the cause for many big security problems. I read nothing about that in the article. Plus the whole article is not very Wikipedia-style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.96.131.10 (talk) 16:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, there are several articles that explain ActiveX's security problems (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142201/article.html and http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11403 , for exampe) 134.173.42.112 (talk) 22:41, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

.

I'll include the Delphi info if you could please cite a reliable source. Thanks Dotancohen 13:16, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

How about the borland.public.delphi.com.activex.writing newsgroup? http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delphi.com.activex.writing/topics?lnk=srg&hl=en

ActiveX controls versus OLE custom controls

The article says ActiveX controls debuted in VB4. Back then they were called OLE custom controls. When you look at the Object Linking and Embedding article it says that ActiveX is a set of web-related extensions to OLE. Somehow this whole mess doesn't make much sense. Shinobu 16:57, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

From what I've read, the only difference between ActiveX controls and OLE custom controls is that for ActiveX controls all interfaces (except IUnknown) are optional. If this is true, which it probably is, that not only means that this article contains some incorrect or misleading statements, it also means that there is not really a reason to keep this as a separate article. Shinobu 08:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Removed from the article:

ActiveX controls debuted in v4.0 of the desktop development tool for Microsoft Windows called Visual Basic, but Microsoft later modified the Internet Explorer web browser to use them to incorporate applet-like functionality into web pages.

In VB4 several control interfaces were mandatory, whereas for ActiveX controls none are. Therefore this sentence is misleading, as VB4 does not in the general case support ActiveX controls. It only supports those ActiveX controls that are also OLE custom controls. Shinobu 13:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

corporate looking text with bad style

Looks like the entire page was copied from another website Fontenot 1031 00:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

• Yeh and written by a Microserf 221.157.74.225 14:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC) yar: http://www.active-x.com/articles/whatis.htm
• Tagged section as needing to be cleaned up.

See below. Shinobu 04:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

• Part of it seems to be from http://www.pc-fixes.net/activex-control-definition.htm 87.60.172.211 18:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite needed

 Done A rewrite of this page is most definitely needed, and soon. Not only is it not Wikified, it's written like an advertisement. I know nothing about ActiveX or I'd do it myself, but this page needs some serious work. --Pyreforge 12:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The whole section was a copyvio; I deleted it. A re-write doesn't seem very useful at the moment since the article might be merged with the Automation article anytime. Since the offending text is scrapped, I will remove the POV tag. Shinobu 04:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, most excellent. I had Googled it, but evidently it wasn't completely verbatim. Thanks :) --Pyreforge 12:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that is is written like an advertisement. I come to an ActiveX article, of course it tells me about ActiveX. I go to Java (programming language) and the first sentence tells me about Sun. (I'm not suggesting a re-write of the Java/Sun page either) 218.214.18.240 23:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

It isn't written like an advertisement, it was written like an advertisement. The deletion of the massive copyright violation fixed most of the article's problems - apart from its lack of content. --Pyreforge 01:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

OLE automation article not great either.

Not to mention the overlap between OLE and COM articles.

I would hate to see the ActiveX article go: to me OLE automation should be covered by the OLE, COM, or ActiveX articles. I don't mind seeing it in the ActiveX article, because the OLE and COM articles are long enough already, and the OLE basics should be moved back out to OLE or COM. 218.214.18.240 23:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Brand name?

Okay, I think I have a theory about where this article goes wrong: ActiveX is actually a brand name for anything Internet-related. That would explain why no one really knows what it is: we're all techies and can't bend our heads around something that doesn't really define a technology, but is Microsoft marketing speak for a hazily defined concept, and we assumed ActiveX was something and subsequently tried to figure out what it was. Much to the enjoyment of Microsoft's marketing department. Shinobu 08:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

merge from ActiveX control

The ActiveX technology is based on the usage of the IUnknown interface. I don't see a reason to devote an entire article to ActiveX controls when all of the same information is going to be in this one. I vote to Merge the ActiveX control article to a section here and try to make a Good Article out of this. I am more than happy to do the merge and edit myself if there are no complaints. Zab (talk) 10:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

• Done. ViperSnake151 18:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Active Technologies

Content Active Technologies is totally unrelated to the article and unnecessarily added. I can remove that if there are no objections. Also, I can simplify the existing definition and summary again if there are no objections from others. Harsha (talk)

Basic information missing

Who or what company created ActiveX?

What does the name mean?

Can a home-computer user put it on his or her computer, or does it only come as a part of a separate program, like Windows XP, Adobe Photoshop, Mozilla Firefox, etc.?

Is ActiveX a brand? Is it a trademark, like "Kleenex" or "JetSki"?

--69.22.254.108 (talk) 02:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Most of these are answered in the article, but I'll try to summarize. The article is awkwardly worded in places and may need some rephrasing, perhaps my answers can help in achieving that goal.

1. Microsoft. It is largely a rebranding of COM/OLE. COM is a way of splitting software in separate components. Applications can create COM objects even if the actual implementation of the object is not in the executable itself, but in a library or even another process or another computer in the case of DCOM. You interact with objects by calling methods on their various interfaces. A slightly overused example: object Bello might provide interfaces Pet, Animal, Dog and Being. The interface Pet might contain methods like Feed, Stroke, Play, Walk etcetera. OLE is a technology originally designed to allow applications to display their documents as part of documents of other applications. For example, embedding a spreadsheet in a text document. It uses COM for its componentization. The objects in this case may be OLE documents or controls, that provide interfaces with methods allowing you to display them, print them, activate them for editing, save them to disk, copy them to the clipboard, etcetera.
2. The name was probably thought up by a marketing droid.
3. Since these technologies are in a large part like communication protocols. In that sense they aren't on your computer as such, just software supporting them. However, several support libraries are needed by most COM/OLE/ActiveX software. If you use Windows, these usually come preinstalled. In that sense ActiveX etcetera are probably already on your computer. If you use GNU/Linux, you may need to install Wine.
4. I don't know. Probably.

Shinobu (talk) 02:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Severely lacking

This article needs more sources; it currently only has a single one. Likewise it needs more information, specifically about its features and its security risks. 69.182.169.180 (talk) 02:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Compatible with just Microsoft Internet Explorer?

"while ActiveX components are only compatible with Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and the Microsoft Windows operating system."

Doesn't Firefox, Opera and other browsers make use of ActiveX controls?--79.121.158.225 (talk) 22:39, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/ActiveX - Never mind, I've researched and found that Firefox and other browsers use NPAPI