What is the ActiveX future?

[MahmoudElgebali]

Hi All,
What is the ActiveX fututre?
I know that it was VBX -> OCX -> ActiveX.
1- Is the ActiveX is going to hanging there for a while ?
2- As the .NET will replace the COM/DCOM is there is a replacement to the ActiveX?
3- what about ActiveX.NET ?
Thanks

[Shuja Ali]

I beleive ActiveX is here to stay for some time..

As ActiveX is directly tied to COM architecture and replacing COM is not easy, The systems that have been developed over past decade or so use COM everywhere.. Moreover Office Products developed by MS are themselves based on COM architecture. So replacing them will not be an easy task, although MS is now promoting Web Services as the new marketting stunt, however COM will stay there for some time and so will ActiveX.

What say??

[WizBang]

I would agree with vb_the_best. Remember that the m$ browser uses ActiveX, which I'm sure they expect to be used widely with Web based services.

Also, I'd like to point out that they know full well that .net is easily decompiled, so this is precisely why I think they are promoting Web based services. They have been making statements over the past several years about this concept. They want to promote the idea of offering the end user Web based access to applications rather than selling the software. Essentially, the end user would only have the basic OS and GUI, and would not actually own commercial software. The user would have to pay a fee to log on (presumably with "passport"?), and they hope to market this to the consumer with the angle that they won't have to buy an expensive application to be able to use it. This means end users will have nearly the equivelent of a "dummy terminal".

Obviously, the .net developer won't be able to sell such applications anyway, so this same angle is applied to the developer as well. This is why ActiveX is here to stay. They need it to enable the Web based concept.

Sorry for the rant, but from what I hear this is the path m$ is paving...