Internet Explorer 4.0's expanded support for ActiveX Scripting provides the fastest, most comprehensive, and language-independent script handling capability available on the Internet today. Now you can view Web pages that use any popular scripting language—including VBScript and JScript.

What makes the script so hip? Web authors can use scripting to make pages more interactive—asking questions, responding to queries, checking user data, calculating expressions, and connecting to other controls.

Go ahead and try the calculator at right. You may want to try both the VBScript and JScript versions, just to compare speeds. (Note: You must be running Internet Explorer 3.02 or higher on a PC to view this demo.)

Scripting allows ActiveX and Java controls to access Internet Explorer 4.0's new Object Model, which in turn allows developers to author pages that users can manipulate—like in the calculator demo at right. Plus, Internet Explorer 4.0's expanded support for ActiveX Controls makes it easier than ever for developers to create powerful applications for the Web.

In addition to the scripting support in the Internet Explorer 4.0 browser, Microsoft provides the following powerful scripting options:

• The Windows Scripting Host (WSH), a simple, powerful, and flexible scripting solution for the 32-bit Windows platform. WSH enables scripts—including those written in VBScript and JavaScript—to be run directly on the Windows desktop without being embedded in an HTML document. This low-memory scripting host is ideal for non-interactive scripting needs such as log-on and administrative scripting. WSH can be run from either the Windows-based host (WSCRIPT.EXE) or the command shell-based host (CSCRIPT.EXE).
• Internet Information Server (IIS), which now supports Active Server Pages that enable scripts to be run on Web servers. In other words, it enables server-side scripting over the Internet or an intranet.