Active x enabled by default?

If you had bought a pc a few years ago, when IE6 would have been installed by default, would active x have been enabled by default please ?

with "active x " you mean flash object.

vineet

I assume so, Vineet - is there any other active x, in the context of websites ? ?

activeX has nothing to do with Flash.

ActiveX is enabled by default in Internet Explorer and doesn’t exist in any other browser. What ActiveX is allowed to run did change between IE6 and IE7 where IE7 only allows some ActiveX to be run.

I beileve Vista and Windows 7 treat ActiveX controls differently to XP. I’m not sure of the exact differences but I know certain things relying on ActiveX stopped working on the newer OS’s.

It was a change implemented in IE7 so anyone running IE7 or IE8 on Windows XP has the same security changes apply there as well. Only those running IE6 on Windows XP (or earlier) get all the hundreds of ActiveX controls that have security holes in them running automatically on their computer.

Thanks Stephen and Mark. Stephen, what activex could be run in IE7 by default - videos ?

Those that the user allowed. An information bar prompts for previous unverified ActiveX controls.

Wrong on both accounts felgall, firstly Flash does have something to-do with ActiveX on the basis that the Internet Explorer flash player makes use of ActiveX (as a component) to run the flash runtime itself. Other browsers use their own implementation however the fact is that as far as IE is concerned, no ActiveX means no flash, no Silverlight or no other embedded executable libraries. Secondly you are actually wrong about IE being the only browser to make use of ActiveX, I discovered a short while ago that Google Chrome actually makes use (or can) make use of ActiveX (to a limited amount), While this is only supported in south-korea it can be enabled in other nations through a NPAPI plug-in (don’t ask me exactly how but I’ve seen a proof of concept). :slight_smile:

As far as I am aware, IE6 by default does have ActiveX turned on, however updates to windows may have altered the default preferences (as there were a couple of IE explicit updates which made minor tweaks for security reasons - like the Killerbits thing which resolved a patent issue with ActiveX itself). ActiveX is a technology, if it’s enabled… anything can be run by default (as long as it’s accepted for download and install by the user), if it’s disabled it won’t work at all. There’s no grey area, it requires user confirmation and acceptance before any ActiveX component can install and run. :slight_smile:

Thanks Alex - I’m all sorted now.