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In my opinion, which is based on my limited experience with ActiveX so far, it depends on whether you are using it to view web page, design them, or both. For web surfers, you get more of a feeling of actually being at the controls so to speak. You can play games, watch mini-movies, play soundtracks, or do any number of other things in a very interactive way. It makes the web seem more like the interactive CD's and software applications that we are already used to using. Guided by software controls which can be easily added to your browser whenever you come across one, web sites become more active than ever before. Many of the world's software companies have gotten into the act and are producing ActiveX software controls even as you are reading this. Many are already being used on the web today. This means that newer and hopefully better things will be coming faster and faster! ActiveX promises to make the web interactive faster than anything that has come before it. For web designers, it is a quick and in my opinion, easier way for designing dynamic web pages for your site. In no time at all, you can add text, buttons, pictures, animations, movies and sounds which can be interdependent on one another and easily manipulated by the user to give a real sense of interactivity. What used to take hours to do in Java or JavaScript can now be done in a fraction of the time with Microsoft's ActiveX Control Pad and HTML Layout Control. It places most of the code (and sometimes all of it) in your HTML document. This doesn't mean that you won't ever type code again but it will reduce that task greatly. It is easy to place any object just where you want it in relation to the other objects on your page. You can hide any object and have it become visible based on a timed event or user action. Layering is also easy using the HTML Layout Control. The layering can also be interactively controlled. |