Microsoft products. Active X is actually the brand name for a set of utility tools, originally designed by Microsoft Corporation, that enhance functionality for many popular software products and websites.
Active X was designed to function with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser only. To date, for computer users who choose to install Active X, many additional tools called "plug-ins" have also been developed to allow IE users as well as those who prefer to use a different browser, such as Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, AOL's Netscape and others, to take browse the internet and advantage of Active X functionality. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter and programs such as Adobe, as well as many chat rooms, video and music streaming tools and gaming programs rely heavily on Active X functionality to run properly as well.
If your browser of choice is Internet Explorer and you use Windows-based computer, there is a high likelihood that you have Active X. This will describe the majority of computer users, as estimates run as high as 90-95 percent in favor of Windows-based systems over Macintosh systems. However, Apple now offers a new feature that allows Macintosh computer users who want to keep using Windows-based software programs on their Mac to choose to split their hard drive. This allows these users to run both Macintosh's operating system and a Windows-based system on the same machine. These users are also likely to find Active X installed on the Windows portion of their computer's hard drive.
If you do not already have a copy, don't worry! The Active X installation is easy, but before you proceed with a new installation, you should first verify whether a current copy of Active X already exists on your machine.
You have two verification options, and both are very easy to conduct.