The Active Platform was the name of a development platform released by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in the 90s for creating web applications and delivering them to a PC

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

. The platform consisted of three parts: ActiveDesktop, which would use

push technology Push technology, also known as server Push, refers to a communication method, where the communication is initiated by a server rather than a client. This approach is different from the " pull" method where the communication is initiated by a clien ...

to deliver the web applications to the desktop; ActiveServer, which would provide server side scripting; and

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

, a set of technologies created to allow software components on different machines to communicate with each other using

COM Com or COM may refer to: Computing * COM (hardware interface), a serial port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers * COM file, or .com file, short for "command", a file extension for an executable file in MS-DOS * .com, an Internet top-level ...

and

OLE OLE, Ole or Olé may refer to: * Olé, a cheering expression used in Spain * Ole (name), a male given name, includes a list of people named Ole * Overhead lines equipment, used to transmit electrical energy to trams, trolleybuses or trains Co ...

History

The Active Platform strategy started to take shape after the cancellation of another Microsoft project, Blackbird, and as challenges were developing from Microsoft's competitors. Blackbird promised to make web applications function more like those users were accustomed to on the desktop, by using distributed

(Object Linking and Embedding) rather than

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

markup. The project was soon scrapped, after Microsoft realized that there were performance problems and it became clear that HTML was gaining in popularity. Meanwhile, Netscape, Sun, Oracle and IBM (referred to as the "Gang of Four") proposed turning

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

into a similar type of distributed object platform that would form the basis of an

Internet OS An Internet operating system, or Internet OS, is any type of operating system designed to run all of its applications and services through an Internet client, generally a web browser. The advantages of such an OS would be that it would run on a ''th ...

which could compete with Windows. Such an OS would rely on web applications that were run through a browser and constructed using Java software components. In response, Microsoft announced the Active Platform at their SiteBuilder conference in October 1996. ActiveDesktop at first was promised by Microsoft to run on any operating system, but only appeared in

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, first through the Internet Explorer 4.0 release, and later in Windows 98. Active Server was based on IIS 3.0 and included

Active Server Pages Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET. History Initially released as an a ...

, the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), Microsoft Transaction Server, and a new message queuing-based middleware. ActiveX was based on a number of technologies Microsoft had already developed for Windows. ActiveX controls were OLE based controls that could be embedded in web pages, applications, and on the desktop. ActiveX became strongly criticized for security problems, and Microsoft later abandoned further development in favor of the .NET Framework. ActiveDesktop was never widely used and disappeared in newer versions of Windows, the concept only later being readopted in the

Windows Sidebar Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features ...

, which was added as a response to the

Dashboard A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel or IP, or fascia) is a control panel (engineering), control panel set within the central console of a vehicle, boat, or cockpit of an aircraft or spacecraft. Usually located directly ahead of the ...

feature in Apple's

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. ActiveServer was later harmonized with the .NET platform and a revamped version of ASP became known as

ASP.NET ASP.NET is a server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stands for Ac ...

. The Active Platform strategy became the center of a United States anti-trust suit against Microsoft.

References

{{reflist Microsoft development tools