ActiveX is a buzzword that refers to technologies that previously may have been associated with the term object linking and embedding (OLE). ActiveX is Microsoft's name for technologies that are based on the Component Object Model (COM). Visual Basic lets you create ActiveX controls, ActiveX documents, ActiveX DLLs, applications that expose ActiveX objects for other applications to use, and on and on. Even Visual Basic itself, and its IDE, are composed of ActiveX components. You'll hear a lot about ActiveX technology in this book and in just about everything else you read about Visual Basic. Think of ActiveX as the technology behind all the components you use and all the components you can create in Visual Basic.