ActiveX Scripting components can be grouped into two major categories: ActiveX Scripting hosts and ActiveX Scripting engines. A host creates a scripting engine to allow scripts to be run against the host. Examples of (potential) ActiveX Scripting hosts include:
ActiveX Scripting engines can be developed for any desired language/runtime environment, including:
To make implementation of the host as flexible as possible, an OLE Automation wrapper for ActiveX Scripting will be provided. However, hosts that instantiate the scripting engine via this OLE Automation wrapper object will not have the control over the runtime namespace, the persistence model, and so on, that they would have if ActiveX Scripting were written to directly.
Interface elements required only in an authoring environment are isolated in this design, so that nonauthoring hosts (such as browsers and viewers) and script engines (for example, VBScript) can be kept lightweight.