O.K. so this month's theme is ActiveX. Acropolis made it hard for me this time. O.K. from what I can tell ActiveX are the used-to-be-called OLE Custom Controls, they're just a cool name for something that already existed. These ActiveX controls, are developed by programmers for use with their programs. For example, if you use Visual Basic and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 then you already have the SHDOCW.DLL file in your system. If you install custom controls on your applications, by the use of OLE Automation you can access this document through your application without having to call another one. If you don't understand very well the OLE subject, I'll explain. OLE stands for Object Linking and Embedding, which makes an application port objects (such as a Microsoft Excel Worksheet) to itself without having to access the other application (in this case Microsoft Excel). This is just a brief example.
What Microsoft has done lately is create a browser that can access OLE objects through the Internet without any problem. Corporations such as Macromedia have already created ActiveX controls, such as Active Shockwave for Internet Explorer.
But it's not all just for experienced programmers. As on the main page of our site, you might see that if you access it, using the Internet Explorer 3.0, if the time on your computer is before 12:00 the page says Good Morning!, if you access it between 12:01 and 6:00 p.m. it says Good Afternoon! and if you access it between 6:01p.m. and 3:00a.m. then it says Good night!. This is all done using the new Microsoft Scripting Language called VBScript, which is relatively easy and you can view the source in every page that has this. This is another example of ActiveX Technologies. If you would like to know more, contact WebX for a full written paper on ActiveX controls.