Ok, I'm pretty sure this is a stupid question so I apologise in advance.
I have never done anything with ActiveX, nor have I really got stuck in with what you can do with Flash/Silverlight, but what I am wondering is can either of these technologies be used to talk to external devices that are connected to a machine?
I guess what I am really asking is: If I have a machine with a non standard device attached, i.e. a bar code reader. Is the only way of accessing this device via off-line installable software?
Cheers, Chris.
An ActiveX control, once the user has allowed it to install and run, can do anything that a native Windows application can do.
(Flash and Silverlight are sandboxed, and can't access devices belonging to the client PC.)