ActiveX is a Microsoft API (Application Program Interface) subsystem
which allows developers to provide small pieces of code as additions to
the user interface components already supplied by Windows.  (The "X" is
a placeholder, like in algebra, so that specific components might be
named ActiveChart, ActiveButton, and so forth.)

  You are apparently visiting a page whose author has embedded one or
more such components in their page.  These *can* be used to provide
animated effects or other advanced features -- but may or may not work
for users of other browsers or OSes.  (It is possible to build pretty
nice pages that use only standard HTML, but many don't mind sacrificing
that wide compatibility in favour of spiffy features.

  It is possible for a malicious (or infected...) to use this mechanism
to deliver malware to site visitors.  And so the security settings in
your browser allow you to specify what happens when it encounters such a
page, ranging from "block all ActiveX" through "Accept all ActiveX" by
way of "Ask me what to do".  And you can have different settings for
sites that are on your own LAN, or which you trust, versus those you're
just checking out.

  Bottom line is that this doesn't really indicate a problem with your
computer as such.  It *may* be a symptom of a problem with that
particular website, so notifying the site administrator ("webmaster")
might be helpful -- or he may answer that this is normal for his site
and that you need to loosen one or two current security settings in
order to use it.

David Gillett

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