A key aspect of ActiveX is its ability to facilitate application integration. Applications are provided with the mechanisms to define a set of standard interfaces through which one application accesses the services of another.
By using Automation, an ActiveX component or application can provide a public set of commands and functions that other applications can use, in the form of methods and properties. Methods allow a client component to perform an action on an object, such as underline a word. Properties return information about the state of an object, such as whether or not a word is underlined.