I think you're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. ActiveX allowed the execution of unsandboxed x86 code from controls embedded in webpages and was

I think you're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. ActiveX allowed the execution of unsandboxed x86 code from controls embedded in webpages and was enabled by default in Internet Explorer, the dominant browser of the time. Javascript caught on because it's at least interpreted and sandboxed, a huge step up from what ActiveX was.