Until the release of IE4, the only way to create a custom ActiveX control was to use a 'real' programming language like C++. While this is still the case for large and complex controls, often we (as Web developers) would like to create smaller, simple controls that encapsulate code we reuse many times on our site. Since the development time to create real ActiveX controls is greater than the time it takes to copy and paste that reusable code onto every page, or into a linked client-side code file, we are often tempted to take the easy way out.
With the availability of Scriptlet technology, we have an easy way to encapsulate client-side code as an ActiveX control component. This allows us to quickly create platform independent (with the upcoming release of IE4 for the UNIX and Macintosh platforms) components that we can deploy onto the Web.