Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In computer programming, and particularly in Microsoft Windows programming, third party software component refers to a reusable software component developed to be either freely distributed or sold by an entity other than the original vendor of the development platform. Microsoft Visual Basic spawned the first commercially viable market for reusable software components. Visual Basic's first extensibility mechanism was the specification for VBX custom controls. In version 4.0 of Visual Basic, the OCX custom control was introduced to replace VBX. OCX was later renamed ActiveX and then COM. In version 7.0 of Visual Basic, also known as VB.NET, Microsoft introduced the .NET Component to replace both VBX and ActiveX. It was still possible to use many ActiveX components in VB.NET by wrapping them in a .NET layer. See Also Enterprise Java Beans VCL / CLX KParts (KDE) External links Several of the best known third party component vendors and resellers: Infragistics (formed by the merger of Sheridan Software and Protoview) ComponentOne (formed by the merger of APEX Software and Videosoft) Data Dynamics Software/FX LEADTOOLS VBxtras / Xtras.Net This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.