ie activex vs addon

I am developing a small addon for firefox. I decided to try to enhance it by developing it to Internet Explorer as well. I 开发者_C百科know that there are IE addons somewhere, but I see that they all demand downloading and running them. Activex controls on the other hand seem very simple to install.

I wanted to understand the difference between addons and activex control before deciding to go with on of them. I couldn't find any material on it on google. Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Thank you

Active X controls are instantiated via <object> tag in an HTML page. They are content extensions. The lifetime of the object is tied to the lifetime of the HTML page that instantiates it.

Add-ons are things like Toolbars, BHOs, Command Bar extensions, and Explorer Bars. These are browser extensions. The lifetime of the object is the lifetime of the Browser process.