## ActiveX Scripting Background

ActiveX Scripting components fall into two categories: ActiveX Scripting hosts and ActiveX Scripting engines. A host creates a scripting engine and calls on the engine to run the scripts. Examples of existing and potential ActiveX Scripting hosts include:

- Microsoft Internet Explorer
- Internet authoring tools
- Tarantula/Gibraltar (server-based scripting)
- Shell

ActiveX Scripting engines can be developed for any language or run-time environment, including:

- Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
- Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript)
- Perl
- Lisp, Scheme

To make implementation of the host as flexible as possible, an OLE Automation wrapper for ActiveX Scripting is provided. However, a host that uses this wrapper object to instantiate the scripting engine does not have the control over the run-time name space, the persistence model, and so on, that it would have if it used ActiveX Scripting directly.

The ActiveX Scripting design isolates the interface elements required only in an authoring environment so that non-authoring hosts (such as browsers and viewers) and script engines (for example, VBScript) can be kept lightweight.

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