>Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system? This is my personal view and it may not be accurate: I don't thin

>Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system? This is my personal view and it may not be accurate: I don't think being open source or cross platform would have mattered to an average PC user back then. Windows held the dominance among PC users (>95%). It wasn't until the rise of firefox that people started noticing the benefits of open source and standards. ActiveX failed because it was way ahead of its time and that it wasn't sandboxed/virtualized making it a security blunder. The one click front door to your OS resulted in a flurry of exploits and viruses giving its bad rep as we know. Dart is leading the same path but in a secure way. I think eventually we will end up there with Web Apps and its only a matter of who gets there first.