Active Scripting (formerly known as ActiveX Scripting) is the technology used in Windows to implement component-based scripting support. It is based on COM (more precisely, OLE Automation) and allows installation of additional scripting engines in the form of COM modules. Windows redirects here. ... Component Object Model (COM) is a platform for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. ... OLE Automation is a late-binding extension to COM and IUnknown. ...

Uses & History

The Active Scripting technologies were first released in 1996, with the release of the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 ^[1] (August 1996) and Internet Information Services 3.0 products (December 1996). Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. ... Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS, formerly called Internet Information Server) is a set of Internet-based services for servers using Microsoft Windows. ...

Usual applications of Active Scripting include ASP server scripts, Internet Explorer, and Windows Script Host (WSH) scripts automating routine tasks, being a Windows counterpart of Unix shell scripts. The interfaces to Active Scripting engines are public, so any developer can create his own applications that are programmable in Active Scripting languages. Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsofts server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. ... Server-side scripting is a web server technology in which a users request is fulfilled by running a script directly on the web server to generate dynamic HTML pages. ... Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. ... The Microsoft Windows Script Host (originally called Windows Scripting Host, but renamed for the second release) is distributed and installed by default on Windows 98 and later versions of Microsoft Windows. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®, sometimes also written as or ® with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... A shell script is a script or computer program written for the shell (command interpreter) of an operating system. ...

Windows versions after Windows 95 as part of the default installation, and optionally, CE), ship with VBScript and JScript engines pre-installed, but there are free and commercial Active Scripting engines available. For example, one can add support for Perl scripting to Windows by installing the ActivePerl engine, the HaskellScript engine for Haskell support, or ActivePython for Python support. Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. ... Windows CE (sometimes abbreviated WinCE) is a variation of Microsofts Windows operating system for minimalistic computers and embedded systems. ... VBScript (short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft. ... JScript is the Microsoft implementation of the ECMAScript scripting programming language specification. ... Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Perl Programming Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... ActiveState is a Canadian software company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia that develops, sells, and supports cross-platform development tools for dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, as well as language distributions and enterprise services. ... Haskell is a standardized purely functional programming language with non-strict semantics, named after the logician Haskell Curry. ... Screenshot of Komodo IDE for python programming language. ... Python is a high-level programming language first released by Guido van Rossum in 1991. ...

Deprecation

Active Scripting is now deprecated in favor of .NET, and no versions of VBScript or JScript with new features will be produced (the newer and incompatible languages Visual Basic .NET and JScript .NET are marketed as replacement for them). Originally, the .NET Framework had a scripting technology of its own and a separate scripting IDE called Visual Studio for Applications (VSA) ^{[2] [3] [4]}, and the interfaces to the technology were also available via Active Scripting, allowing even .NET-unaware applications to be scripted using .NET languages. VSA was also meant to replace Visual Basic for Applications. ^[5] However, that entire technology was deprecated in version 2.0 of the .NET Framework ^[4], leaving no clear upgrade path for applications desiring Active Scripting support (although "scripts" can be created in C#, VBScript, and other .NET languages, which can be compiled and executed at run-time via libraries installed as part of the standard .NET runtime). Look up Deprecation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Microsoft . ... Visual Basic . ... JScript . ... The Microsoft . ... Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsofts Visual Basic, an event driven programming language and associated integrated development environment (IDE) which is built into most Microsoft Office applications. ... The Microsoft . ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... VBScript (short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ...

The JScript and VBScript Active Scripting languages are currently maintained by Microsoft's Sustaining Engineering Team, which is responsible for bug fixes and security enhancements. Regardless of its deprecation, the amount of scripts written for Active Scripting languages ensures it will continue to be shipped with future Windows releases for many years to come. Microsoft has also introduced Windows PowerShell which can expose applications via PowerShell cmdlets and/or PowerShell providers. Windows PowerShell is an administration focused extensible command line interface (CLI) shell and scripting language product developed by Microsoft. ...

See also

• Windows Script Host
• JScript
• VBScript
• Windows Script File
• ActiveX control

The Microsoft Windows Script Host (originally called Windows Scripting Host, but renamed for the second release) is distributed and installed by default on Windows 98 and later versions of Microsoft Windows. ... JScript is the Microsoft implementation of the ECMAScript scripting programming language specification. ... VBScript (short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft. ... A Windows Script File (WSF) is a file type used by the Microsoft Windows Script Host. ... ActiveX control is a term used to denote reusable software components that are based on Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). ...

References

External links

• Future of VBScript Language - Information about the future of Active Scripting technologies.