ActiveX Control Viewer

Introduced in Internet Explorer 3.0, ActiveX controls enabled developers to use tools such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, or Borland Delphi could create small, fast software components that could be displayed inside Web pages. This made it much faster to develop Web-based applications; developers could simply leverage the code that they were already writing, perhaps for internal custom applications, and insert them onto a Web page. It did, however, make it difficult to manage these controls once they were installed on a client’s PC. The ActiveX Control Viewer enables you to see all of the controls installed and clean them up when necessary.

Key Features

• Integration with Windows user interface. The ActiveX Control Viewer exists as a simple directory inside the Windows folder, displaying all of the installed ActiveX controls.
  
  
• Delete controls. Until now, there was no easy way to find all of the installed ActiveX controls, much less delete them. The ActiveX Control Viewer makes it easy.

In Internet Explorer 3.0,the ActiveX controls were installed in a folder called occache, but there is no functionality in that folder. In Internet Explorer 4.0, ActiveX controls are installed into a new folder called Downloaded ActiveX Controls. And like the History, Subscriptions, and Tasks folders, it has special functionality in the Windows 95 user interface.

All of the installed controls appear inside the ActiveX Control folder and can be uninstalled by right-clicking any icon.

While Authenticode security software tells the user where a control originated from during installation, it was never easy to know where a control came from after it was installed. By choosing Properties on any ActiveX control, you can reveal information such as the last time the control was accessed and the source of the control.

What are the Benefits of the ActiveX Control Viewer?

• Easy user control. With the ActiveX Control Viewer, it’s much easier for users to see the controls installed on their PC and delete those they haven’t used in a long time, maximizing their available disk space.
  
  
• Find files faster. For a stricter corporate environment, it makes it much easier to locate unnecessary software, which may not adhere to company standards.