ActiveX Controls
At its core, ActiveX is the successor to Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), a 1990 technology that made it possible for programs to reuse components of other applications in a standardized, language-independent way. A simple use case for ActiveX would be a spreadsheet application wishing to embed an editable vector image from a graphics-editing program or a simple game that wants to embed a video player.
The idea is not controversial, but by the mid-1990s Microsoft had decided that ActiveX made sense in the browser, too. After all, wouldn’t websites want to benefit from the same Windows components that desktop applications could rely on? The approach violates the idea of nurturing an open, OS-independent web, but it’s otherwise ...
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