Summary

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With the inclusion of programmed objects such as ActiveX controls, Java applets, and Netscape plug-ins, Web pages can become complex, living documents. Choosing the appropriate component technology is not very straightforward. Netscape plug-ins are very popular for including media elements such as Flash animations, video, or sound files. Unfortunately, they are platform-specific, and largely limited to Netscape browsers, although most other browsers can handle their syntax and come up with something equivalent. The preferred solution in the Microsoft world is ActiveX controls. ActiveX controls are just as platform-specific as Netscape plug-ins, and have some potential security issues. Solving the cross-platform problem requires complex page scripting or the use of Java applets that provide cross-platform object support, typically at the expense of performance. Either way, the page rendering should degrade gracefully if the user can't support the particular object technology. Eventually, the syntax for all included media will be handled with an <object> tag, but for now, <embed> and <applet> should be used as well to provide backward compatibility for including plug-ins and Java applets in a Web page.

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